The Psychotic Biotic
by 10tonsoffun
Summary: Lots of sex, drugs and violence! From the messy experiments at Cerberus' Teltin Facility to her first meeting with pirates, slavers and even Aria T'Loak, this trilogy covers Jack's troublesome youth. 'The Psychotic Biotic' is a prequel to 'Biotic Beginnings'.
1. Subject Zero

_'The Psychotic Biotic' is a triology about Jack's early life, surviving the horrors of the Teltin Facility and becoming one of the most notorious criminals in the galaxy. Due to the tragic nature of Jack's childhood and adolescence, young readers are warned that this story contains violence, sexual references and language that some readers may find inappropriate._

 _'The Psychotic Biotic' is a prequel to my 50 chapter story, 'Biotic Beginnings', but the two stories can be read in any order or completely independent of each other. But of course, I strongly recommend that you read 'Biotic Beginnings' either before or after reading 'The Psychotic Biotic'._

 _This is the first chapter. It is called 'Subject Zero'. Enjoy._

Subject Zero

 _The Teltin Facility – Pragia – 2171 CE_

"Good morning, Zero," the man in the white coat said. She had never met this particular man before, but she knew that his pleasant tone was just an act, it always was.

She sat on her bed with her hands in her lap and watched as the man looked around her room. She felt like he was judging it, and she wondered if she would be punished for not keeping it tidy enough. It wasn't like she had many toys to make a mess with, just a few books, and they were sitting on her desk in a relatively neat stack.

Without saying anything, the man started walking around the room. For a moment, he lingered at the window, looking out at the other children.

"They can't see you," Zero said. She knew, for she had been waving at them for years, knocking on the glass and shouting, but they never seemed to notice anything.

The man just nodded, but continued to stare at the children outside.

"It is your birthday today," he said without taking his eyes off the children playing outside. "I've been told you know what that means."

She nodded. It meant that she was born 10 years ago, but more importantly: "Tests," she said.

The man finally faced her and nodded slowly. Zero hated birthdays. She didn't know if it was the same for other children, but her birthdays were always extremely painful and usually ended with her crying herself to sleep.

She scratched at a long scar that ran down the side of her neck. She didn't remember exactly how she had gotten that particular mark. One of the adults had put a needle in her, and when she woke up, she had a sore scar reaching from her jaw to the collarbone. This was one of the newer scars, but she had many. Several were from fights with the other children.

She was never allowed to leave her room, only when the adults escorted her outside. This rarely happened, but these were the only times she ever met other children. However, she was not allowed to talk to them. Not that she wanted to. The other children absolutely hated her. She did not know why.

Perhaps it was because of the fights. She always won, even against the big boys, and she often hurt the other children. She even thought that she might have killed some of them. But she hadn't wanted to. It was the adults who forced her to do it. She assumed it was the same for the other children, the ones she had to fight. So why would the children be angry with her? She did not understand.

Monster, they called her. Zero knew that word very well. It appeared often in the books her teacher had given her to read. But she didn't think she was a monster. When she looked in her mirror, she looked like a regular girl with freckles and a ponytail.

The man in the white coat looked at the desk, perusing her books.

"You have to fight today," he said, not even looking at her.

"I don't want to," she said, knowing this was dangerous. She would not have dared if it had not been a new adult. They usually did not hit her on the first visit.

SMACK!

Zero fell off her bed and curled up on the floor, holding her burning cheek. This man was not nice.

Whimpering, she held out her left arm, expecting him to inject something with a needle. They usually did before a fight.

"No," the man said, shaking his head. "No injections today."

Zero looked up at him, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. She was confused. There had always been needles, often a multitude, before a fight.

The man took her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet. "We want to see you fighting on your own," he said.

She did not understand. She always fought alone, sometimes even against several other children. So what did he mean 'on your own'?

The man pulled a metal collar out of his pocket and put it around her neck, it was tight and she felt like she could not breathe.

"What is that?" she asked and tried to loosen the collar, but the man slapped her hand, hard.

"Motivation," he simply said.

Then he took her by the arm and led her out of the room, where two armed guards joined them. They walked down a short hallway and exited into a much larger room filled with other children, all wearing the same grey uniform. Her clothes were different, black, white and golden yellow.

As soon as she stepped into the room, all the children started making hissing noises.

"Monster!" she heard the now familiar call.

A boy, probably a few years older than her, broke free from the crowd and ran straight for her, raising his fist as if he was about to punch her. But one of the guards jumped between them and drove the butt of his rifle into the boy's forehead. The child almost flipped in the air, so hard was the hit, and he landed limply on the floor. A moan travelled through the room, and other children looked like they were going to attack. Zero was shocked. Why were the children behaving this way?

A few more children ran for her and were intercepted by the guards. But one girl slipped through and grabbed Zero, who stared fearfully at the other girl. She looked to be around her own age. Her face was radiating hatred.

Panicked, Zero tried to push the other girl away. But instead of simply being shoved back, the girl was blasted off her feet, flew through the air all the way to the other end of the room, where she collided with the wall. Her body made a horrible crunching sound and slid down the wall, until it landed on the floor with a dull thud. Zero looked fearfully down at her glowing hands. She had never done something like that before. She was almost certain that she had just killed the other girl.

All the other children started screaming and crying, but instead of charging at her, they moved away, so Zero and the man in the white coat could walk to the center of the room.

For some reason, the man next to Zero was smirking despite all this commotion, and he looked down at her with something akin to pride.

Zero kept throwing glances to the other end of the room, wondering if she would see the girl she had just slammed against the wall getting back on her feet. She doubted it. Constantly, she was turning her head, watching the other children, wondering which one of them would be the next to attack her.

She tried to avoid eye contact. There was too much hatred. She wanted to look down at her feet so bad, but she had to be alert in case there was another attack. How could she possibly have deserved this? Didn't the other children know that she only wanted to talk to them?

Another group of guards pushed through the crowd and joined Zero and the man with the white coat in the middle of the room. Behind them, wearing a metallic collar similar to the one around Zero's neck, was a tall boy. He must have been at least four years older than Zero.

The boy was obviously very angry. He glared at her with eyes looking as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. He was sweating profusely and had foam at the corner of his mouth. Every few seconds, his hands glowed brightly, and Zero knew that he had powers just like her.

The older boy scared her, and she tried to hide behind the man in the white coat, but he pulled hard on her ponytail, forcing her to stand her ground.

The boy screamed something that Zero didn't understand, spit flew out of his mouth. He lunged forward with his arms outstretched, and Zero flinched. The guards held the boy back, but they were struggling.

"Attack him," the man in the white coat ordered.

Zero didn't want to. She shook her head.

Immediately, the collar around her neck sent a sharp jolt through her body and all her muscles contracted. She didn't know how long she was writhing on the floor before it finally stopped.

She whimpered, trying to remove the collar, but one of the guards stepped on her hand.

"Get up," the man in the white coat said.

Sobbing, Zero pulled her hand out from under the guard's boot and got back on her feet. Her legs wobbled under her weight. Her muscles were sore from the electric shock.

Instead of ordering her to attack again, the man in the white coat simply signaled to the guards to release the boy who had been constantly fighting to get to Zero.

The boy ran forward, screaming and glowing brightly. Surprised, Zero only just dodged his first punch, but was caught on the chin by his other first. Her head violently snapped back, and she slid across the floor. For a moment, she lay there, looking up at the ceiling. Everything was a bit fuzzy. She could hear the other children cheering all around her and felt them spitting in her face.

"Monster!" Someone shouted again, other children laughed at her pain.

Then she felt her body being lifted into the air, and she saw the boy standing there with his arm outstretched, laughing maniacally as she soared higher and higher.

"Slam! Slam! Slam!" she heard the children cheering.

And that was exactly what happened. The boy brought his hand down, and she was thrown back down, smashing against the floor.

Everything was black and quiet for a moment, before she finally was able to see again, then came the overwhelming roar of the crowd, then the pain.

She screamed and curled herself into a ball.

"Fight back!" the man in the white coat shouted, and she felt another crippling electric jolt going through her body.

It finally stopped, and she lay panting on the floor.

"Attack!" the man shouted.

"Fight!" another guard yelled.

One of the spectating children ran forward and kicked her hard in the stomach. She groaned, looking up at the girl standing above her, holding her hands in the air as she was congratulated by the rest of the children.

Zero didn't know exactly what happened, but suddenly she was on her feet and had her fingers around the other girl's throat. The girl appeared shocked, and tried to grab her forearm. But Zero squeezed until her nails penetrated the other girl's skin. Slowly, the tips of Zero's fingers disappeared into the girl's neck until she reached the windpipe. With one quick motion, she ripped out the girl's windpipe and stepped back as blood sprayed out onto the floor.

The boy she had been fighting tried to punch her again, but she ducked and brought her glowing fist up to the underside of his chin. The boy landed on the floor with a dull thud, and Zero jumped on top him, pummeling her small, bloody hands into his face. The boy was already limp, but she continued to slam her fists into his face, screaming and crying at the same time. It was as if everything around her was blurred, and the pain she had felt was gone. She only felt anger.

She continued to punch the boy, whose face was reduced to a bloody pulp at this point, until a guard tried to grab her shoulder. She spun around and hissed at him with gritted teeth, there was a flash of blue light, and the guard was shoved back into the crowd of children.

A few of the other children also tried to stop her, but she sent them flying away, not quite sure if she had killed them or not.

Then she felt another jolt coming out of the collar and going through her body, and she fell off the boy as she lost control of her muscles. The man in the white coat hurried forward, pulled out a massive needle and injected some pink liquid into the side of her neck.

Slowly, as the collar stopped sending electric currents through her body, she could feel whatever she had been injected with beginning to work. Everything suddenly seemed so pleasant, and, for some reason, she could not stop smiling. She sat up and ran her hands through the blood pool on the floor. It was warm and the feeling sent delightful tingles up through her spine. Something compelled her to put two fingers into her mouth, and she tasted the blood. It was delicious.

"Monster!" she heard another outraged cry from the crowd, but she just smiled and continued to lick her fingers individually.

Still sitting in the middle of a pool of blood, she looked at the two corpses, she felt proud, and another wave of pleasant tingles rolled through her body. Even the man in the white coat seemed happy now.

"Remember this feeling," he said, his voice sounded strange, as if he was speaking in slow motion.

She nodded slowly. She wanted to remember. She wanted to do anything as long as she could feel like this all the time.

"Can I fight again?" she asked the man. Her own voice sounded much deeper than usual. It was strange.

His smile broadened. "Not right now."

Zero frowned, drawing circles in the blood with her finger.

When she was escorted back to her room, she followed quietly, humming to herself all the way. As she entered the room, she could feel the effect of the injection wearing off, and she became more aware of her surroundings again.

"Didn't you want to do tests today?" she asked, as the man in the white coat walked her over to the shower in the corner of her room.

"Later," he said. "Shower first."

She looked down herself, noticing that she was covered in blood. The original white, black and yellow colors of her clothes had almost disappeared in a sea of red.

Sobering from her injection, she gasped and ran to the mirror above the sink. There was blood all over her face and in her hair as well.

She looked at the man in the white coat. He just smiled back at her, gesturing towards the shower.

Zero kicked off her shoes, pulled the shirt over her head and dropped her pants. She looked up at the man before taking off her panties.

"Aren't you going to leave?" she asked. The adults usually left her alone when she had to use the toilet or took a shower.

The man slowly shook his head and motioned for her to continue undressing. So she pulled down her panties and stepped into the shower.

The man dragged the chair from the desk, placed it in front of the shower and sat down to watch her wash herself.

"You had a slow start today, Zero," he said. "But you did well in the end."

She didn't know what to say to that, so she continued to wash herself in silence. Looking down at the drain in the floor, she saw how the red liquid ran down her legs and eventually disappeared.

The man leaned back in his chair, still staring at her.

"You missed a spot on your forehead," he said.

Zero allowed the water to hit her face and rubbed her forehead as hard as she could with her hands.

When she opened her eyes again, the man was standing right next to her, holding out a towel. "I think that's enough," he said and turned off the shower.

Zero grabbed the towel, dried herself quickly and wrapped it around her body. She didn't like the way the man looked at her.

"You will have at least one fight like this every week from now on," he said, as another adult walked in and placed a tray with food on the desk. "You should get something to eat. I'll be back later for those tests."

The man was about to leave.

"Wait!" Zero said, holding the towel tightly to her slender form. "What is your name?"

He took a few steps back towards her, Zero swallowed hard.

"Why does it matter to you?" he asked. He did not sound angry, mostly curious.

She shrugged. Actually, she did not know exactly why she wanted to know the man's name. Maybe it was because the adults who visited her room, even though they did not treat her nicely, were the only personal relations she had. She did not know the names of any of the other children, only that her own name was Subject Zero. At least she should get to know the names of the adults. And she did know a few of their names.

"You can call me Dr. Pavlov," he said and left Zero alone with her food.

-X-X-X-

 _The Teltin Facility – Pragia – 42 Months later (2174 CE)_

Subject Zero, now 13 years old, was on her back, looking up into the lab ceiling, blinking away tears. Her feet had been strapped into stirrups, while a doctor was examining her down below.

She gasped and fought against the restraints as he touched her with a cold instrument.

"Easy now, Zero," Dr. Pavlov, who was standing next to her, said.

The doctor stopped touching her and looked up for a moment.

"Continue," Pavlov told him, and the doctor stuck his instrument back in. Zero whimpered.

"Are you sure you haven't been bleeding?" Dr. Pavlov asked.

She shook her head. "I have bled before. Many times."

"I'm not talking about bleeding because someone hit you in the arena," he said.

Zero was confused. What else would make her bleed?

To her relief, the doctor pulled his instrument out again. "She is speaking the truth," he said, turning off the lamp attached to his head. Zero wondered what he could possibly tell by looking _up there_.

She looked up at Dr. Pavlov, hoping that he would be satisfied now and declare this examination over. She felt very exposed, lying naked on the table with her feet strapped into stirrups.

"What else can you say?" Pavlov asked his colleague, who was placing his instruments on a tray held by a nurse.

"I think it is unlikely she will ever menstruate or have children," the doctor said, pulling off his rubber gloves. "Her biology is too altered at this point."

Dr. Pavlov nodded. "So breeding is off the table?" he asked.

The doctor wiped sweat from his brow. "I would say so. But we should run tests on some of the other subjects."

Zero, who was mostly just satisfied that the doctor had left her alone, did not care that she apparently would never have children. In her experience, children were not particularly nice anyway.

Dr. Pavlov released her straps and Zero pulled her feet out of the stirrups. She was cold and could not wait to get her clothes back on.

"You are growing," Pavlov noted, looking up and down her naked body as she stood on the freezing lab floor in front of him.

She looked down herself. She too had noticed that she was growing in certain places and becoming taller. But the most remarkable changes were all the new scars. She didn't like them, and she was starting to suspect that the adults were coming into her room at night and operating on her. She often found a new scar when she woke up and was sore.

She was also becoming stronger, and she found that she was getting better and better at controlling her powers. Except when she was angry or scared, then her body would just hurt others whether she wanted to or not. She was terrified when this happened. She hated not being in control of her own powers, but had to admit that she wasn't. The adults had also realized that her powers were evolving. Zero no longer just fought another kid in the arena fights. Instead, she was pitted against groups of up to five children. Sometimes she even fought adults, so called 'inmates' that Dr. Pavlov had bought for her to 'play' with.

She ran her hand along the straps that she had just been tied down with. This was another consequence of her increasing power. The adults had begun to put her in restraints whenever they thought she might object to an activity. She also constantly wore the collar and could be shocked to unconsciousness if she did not behave as the adults wanted her to behave.

She reached out for her clothes, and Dr. Pavlov handed them to her. She quickly put on her uniform, hoping to get some warmth back into her body on the walk back to her room.

She was escorted by Pavlov, who was walking a few steps behind her, holding the remote control for her collar in his hand. As they walked down a long hallway, a group of guards came around the corner. They were escorting a boy around Zero's age. She almost never met any of the other children, except when she was fighting. It sometimes happened when they crossed paths in the hallways like this. But the other children usually called her names and tried to spit at her, usually leading to them being hit by the guards.

Zero had never seen this boy before. Not in the arena, and not when she was looking out of the window in her room. He was new. That usually meant that he wouldn't be as mean to her as the other children. But that always changed after the first fight.

This boy was definitely new. She would have noticed him. He was tall, had black hair and appeared not to fear the guards.

Looking at him, Zero felt a weird sensation in her stomach. Something that she had never felt before. For some reason, she wanted this boy to notice her, to talk to her.

She had given up on trying to make friends with the other children at this point. They always ignored her when she tried to communicate with them through her window, and the tension in the arena was only getting more and more hostile for every fight. But something about this boy made her want to give it one last chance.

He was smiling at her as they passed each other, and she shyly smiled back.

"Hi," the boy said, waving at her, but one of the guards hit him with his baton, breaking the boy's arm. He screamed and grabbed his elbow.

Zero had stopped in the middle of the hallway, glaring at the guard with the baton. Dr. Pavlov tried to nudge her forward, but she had started to glow.

"Zero…" Pavlov said in a warning tone, holding up the remote control for her collar. "Calm down!"

She looked down at the boy, sitting on the floor, crying and holding on to his limp arm. Still glowing brightly, she looked back at the guard, who raised his baton and took a step towards her. Without realizing that she had done anything, the guard was suddenly thrown into the wall with such force that he turned into red mist, covering all the other guards, Dr. Pavlov, the crying boy and Zero herself in blood.

She smiled down at the boy, who had stopped crying. But this time he didn't smile back. Instead, he looked absolutely terrified. She was just able to register a current pulsing through her body from the collar, before everything went black and she collapsed on the floor.

Zero woke up and found Dr. Pavlov sitting in a chair next to her bed. She wondered how long she been out. She looked down and noticed that she been washed and dressed in a new uniform.

Dr. Pavlov looked concerned.

"You killed a man," he said.

Zero sat up in her bed. This was not the mood he was usually in when she had killed someone. She knew why, she was not allowed to harm the adults.

She nodded. "What happened to that boy?" she asked.

"Don't you worry about him!" Pavlov shouted angrily. "You will be punished tonight, Zero, after the fight… Do you understand that?"

"But…"

Pavlov pressed his remote control, and Zero felt another current rolling through her already sore muscles, passing through her heart and making her mind go blank. All she could sense was the pain. She rolled around on her bed, screaming, kicking and flailing her arms. When it finally stopped and she regained control of her body, she noticed that she had peed herself.

"Filthy animal," Pavlov sighed, noticing the wet patch on her pants and the bedsheet.

Zero started to cry, and Pavlov pushed her face into the mattress. "Pull yourself together," he shouted and stormed out of the room.

She knew that he would be back soon. She had to fight. But she had never felt less like fighting. Not only had the electrical shocks made her muscles very sore, but she felt pathetic as she laid there, crying on her mattress, soaked in her own urine.

Perhaps it would be easiest if she just allowed the other kids or the inmates, or whoever she had to fight, to kill her. She didn't think she could survive much longer. Unfortunately, she had been unable to kill herself. She was being monitored day and night, and every time she had come close, guards had rushed in to stop her, often by using the collar to knock her out.

Of course, the guards had removed all the objects that Zero might potentially use to commit suicide from her room, but she was still experimenting. Lately, she had been tying the sheets around her wrists and tried to rip them off.

Zero rolled out of her bed, tossed away her wet clothes and crawled under her desk to cry. She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chin and cried until a guard came in, carrying a fresh uniform.

She peeked out from under the table, expecting the guard to just leave the clothes on the desk and leave, but he still stood there, glaring at her.

Scared, Zero quickly crawled back under the table. But the man grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her out. She screamed and tried to hold on to the table, but she couldn't get a grip. Her naked body slid across the floor, until the guard stopped dragging and pressed his knee into her chest, pinning her to the ground.

"That man you killed," he sneered. "He was my brother."

Zero couldn't breathe, she tried to push against the man's leg, but she couldn't move him.

"Your brother was a dick!" she gasped. She almost hoped that the guard would just kill her.

He placed his hand around her thin neck, squeezing just above her collar. Zero coughed and tried to kick the guard. Even though a part of her just wanted to die, she simply wasn't able to let him choke her. Her body was fighting back.

Seconds before she slipped in unconsciousness, the guard suddenly started floating upwards and his grip around Zero's neck loosened. She blinked her eyes, and the guard was slammed back down to the floor, landing right next to her with a horrible crunch.

Zero coughed and tried to take deep breaths to get some oxygen back into her system. The guard, who she had assumed was dead, started groaning, and she quickly crawled backwards away from him.

Then, in a sudden fit of rage, she ran back to the guard, who was lying face-down, still groaning, grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his head into the floor until he was quiet.

Dr. Pavlov entered just as she slammed the guard's head into the floor for the last time and sat down on top of his body.

"I didn't want to…" she panted, gasping for breath. "He…"

Pavlov waved his hand dismissively, and Zero shut up.

"He shouldn't have been in here," Dr. Pavlov said.

Zero didn't feel the least bit safer with Pavlov than she had with the guard who tried to strangle her, and she hurried back to the desk, planning to crawl back under it. But Pavlov stopped her.

"Put your uniform on," he said, pointing to the clothes on the table. "We're going to the arena."

Wasn't it enough that she had killed two people in one day already? Pavlov still wanted her to fight?

When she hesitated, Dr. Pavlov raised his hand and wriggled the remote control. Zero sighed and put on her uniform.

"I'm tired," she complained, zipping her jacket. She didn't know why she said it. It was not likely to change Dr. Pavlov's mind about sending her to the arena.

"Here's a suggestion," the doctor replied as they walked out of her room. "Just attack when I tell you to attack today. If you don't force me to shock you, and if you attack before your opponent can hurt you, you could save yourself a lot of pain."

As always, the abuse was instant when Zero and Pavlov entered the arena. The other children spat on her and yelled terrible things, as they carved their way through the crowd.

"I hate you!" she heard someone yell.

"Fuck you, bitch!" shouted another.

"I hope they fucking kill you!" a girl, no older than eight, screamed.

Zero had stopped trying to figure out why they were so mean to her. As far as she knew, they were able to play, but she had to stay by herself all the time. She had it so much worse than them, and she was not the one who wanted to fight all the time. She couldn't help if she was stronger than them and always ended up winning. That was not her fault.

She had come to terms with the fact that the other children simply just hated her. And with the way she was being treated, she hated them just as much. She didn't even feel bad about killing them any longer, all though she still didn't exactly enjoy it.

Pavlov and Zero stopped in the middle of the room, and the doctor held out a syringe with pink liquid. Zero eyed it hungrily. There was the wonderful needle that would make all her pain, all her horrible thoughts, all of it, go away. She wanted it. She needed it. Now!

She tried to grab the syringe, but Dr. Pavlov quickly put it back inside his white coat.

"Win the fight for me, Zero," he whispered in her ear. "And I'll give you a double dose."

She _had_ to have that injection. If she had to kill a few more of these kids who hated her anyway, what did it matter? All she could think about was the sensation that pink liquid would give her when she won.

As usual, the children in the crowd, all in grey uniforms, parted to make room for a group of guards, bringing in whomever she had to fight. This time, it looked like she would be up against four other children.

All four, three boys and a girl, seemed to be a few years younger than her, but they looked like they couldn't wait to attack her. The guards had to hold them back.

She readied herself, envisioning Dr. Pavlov's needle piercing her skin and the pink liquid being pumped into her blood, spreading a feeling of warmth and invincibility.

Suddenly, her four opponents were released and sprinted towards her. Zero took off and tackled the first boy to the ground. Another boy swung his fist wildly, but she grabbed his wrist, and broke his arm with a biotic punch to the elbow joint.

The girl grabbed her from behind, and while her arms were locked against her sides, the last boy kicked her hard in the stomach. She coughed, but quickly jumped into the air and threw her bodyweight backwards. She landed on her back, on top of the girl, who groaned and let go of Zero's arms.

The boy she had tackled to the ground was back on his feet and tried to attack Zero while she was lying down, but when he tried to punch her, Zero kicked him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards into the crowd. She was certain she had punctured the boy's lungs with his broken ribs.

She quickly rolled off the girl and jumped to her feet. Assuming that the boy with punctured lungs was out of the fight, she only had to defeat three more, one of them with a broken arm, to get her prize.

Not surprisingly, the boy with the broken arm allowed the two others to attack first. The girl, who seemed to have caught her breath, had a wild look in her eyes and tried to use her powers to lift Zero into the air, but her power was no match, and Zero was able to keep her feet on the ground. She could feel that some force was trying to pull her towards the ceiling, but she was able to fight it, and it quickly faded.

Zero rushed forward, grabbed the girl's pigtails and yanked her head down while moving her knee upwards. Her knee, with a considerable amount of biotic power behind it, absolutely crushed the girl's skull, and Zero threw her dead body into the horrified crowd.

The two remaining boys simultaneously tried to grab her, but she smashed their heads together and they fell to the floor.

She took a deep breath, believing that the fight was over, but the guards started pushing other kids from the crowd towards her. She was quickly surrounded, as the children gathered around her.

Feeling cheated out of her reward, she angrily sent out a shockwave, knocking down several of her new opponents. The rest attacked her, and she felt herself losing control. She tried to fight it, but eventually just had to let go and give into her rage.

The first boy who reached her had his throat ripped out. The second, a much older boy, almost an adult, managed to grab the collar of her uniform, but she drove her charged fist into his stomach, passing straight through his intestines. She closed her fingers and pulled a bloody handful of slimy strings back out. The boy collapsed on the floor, and Zero sent two girls, who had almost reached her, flying across the room.

The guards kept pushing children towards her, and Zero killed one after the other. Covered in blood, she had lost all control and had lost count of how many she had killed. She had just punched a small boy to death and spun around herself, looking for the next attacker, when another boy was shoved in front of her. He looked familiar. It was the boy who had actually smiled to her earlier in the hallway.

She hesitated for a moment. Did she really want to kill him?

But the boy didn't smile at her now, he was horrified and angry. Like the other children, he tried to grab her, and Zero kicked him just above the kneecap, forcing him to the ground, where she stomped on his head until she couldn't recognize his face anymore.

Finally, the guards stopped pushing children towards her, and Zero collapsed on the floor, trying to catch her breath. She was surrounded by dead bodies, and if she was not given her syringe immediately, Zero was certain she would soon be dead herself. She was too tired to move, but inside her, the rage was still boiling. She could have killed them all, everyone in the room. She could literally hear herself growling like a wild animal as she stared up into the ceiling.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Pavlov coming closer, stepping over the bodies. In his hand was the syringe with the pink liquid. She closed her eyes and waited for the sweet sting of the needle, the moment of miniscule pain that indicated that so much indescribable pleasure was coming.

A few seconds later, she felt the needle plunging into the side of her neck, and she relaxed as she felt the pink liquid being pumped through her system. Then it came. A rush of warmth spreading from her chest and all the way up to her head and out to her fingers and toes, taking away all the pain and clearing her head of all thoughts.

"Was that a double dose?" she asked drowsily, remembering something about a promise along those lines.

Pavlov nodded and pulled her to her feet. "Any more would stop your heart," he said.

"Just give me another shot then," she said, patting his pockets for another syringe.

He took a step back, and she felt one of the guards picking her up. She didn't like being carried around, but she felt too good to complain. She closed her eyes and just enjoyed the way her body was feeling. When she opened them again, she was back in her room, lying on her bed in the darkness.

She could feel the effect of the pink liquid was wearing off. She did not know how long it had been since her fight, but the lights were off in her room and outside her window. It had to be night. Her bedsheets had obviously been changed, and she noticed that she was not wearing any clothes. They had probably washed her after the fight.

She tried to sit up in her bed, but it felt like every single muscle in her body was burning. Moaning, she crawled out of the bed towards the toilet in the corner of the room. She reached it just in time and threw up into the bowl.

She groaned and flushed, before pulling herself up to the sink next to the toilet. She greedily drank, feeling like the water just couldn't come out of the tap fast enough. When she finally could not drink any more, she looked in the mirror and jumped. Staring back at her was a girl covered completely in glistening blood. It took a second before Zero realized that it was herself. But she was not covered in blood, only her reflection in the mirror.

"You killed that boy," the bloody reflection accused.

Zero trembled. "No, you did! I liked him!"

Her reflection shrugged, and licked the blood off the palm of her hand, "It's all the same. He's dead, isn't he?"

Zero nodded. He was dead. She looked down at her own, clean palms.

"You're so weak!" the reflection laughed, even her teeth were tainted with blood.

"Fuck you!" Zero screamed. "Fuck you! I hate you!"

She turned around and limped back towards her bed where she crawled under her sheet and began to cry. She almost wished she was back in the arena. At least she was not alone with her own thoughts there.

-X-X-X-

 _The Teltin Facility – Pragia - 8 Months Later (2175 CE)_

"Cerberus," she whispered to herself, pounding her forehead into the tabletop. "Cerberus, Cerberus, Cerberus," she repeated, banging her head into the table every time.

Her forehead was bruised and very sore, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. There was an entire world out there. A world with different planets and aliens, not just humans like all the ones she had met so far in her life. She had overheard some of the guards talking about it. Apparently, the world was far greater than what she had believed her entire life.

She had asked Dr. Pavlov about it, but he had just slapped her and told her not to worry about the size of the world. This was the reason for Zero's current mood. She knew that there was another world out there, somewhere. But she would never get to see any of it.

"Cerberus," she sighed and banged her head on the table again.

The adults had been giving her reading material containing this word since she was six years old. She was still not sure exactly what it was. But she was almost certain that it had something to do with the logo that she was seeing all over the place. It was on her own uniform, on Dr. Pavlov's white coat, on all the guards and on the grey uniforms worn by all the other children.

"Cerberus," she chanted and pounded her head against the table. She had been thinking about that word a lot lately, as evidenced by her bruised head and bloodstained table. But no matter how hard she hit her head, she just couldn't get the word out of there.

She could sit like that for hours if the guards did not come in to stop her. On several occasions, Dr. Pavlov had asked her why she was doing it. She could not provide a good answer. He had assumed that she was bored, which she could not deny. But instead of giving her new books or letting her leave her room, as she had hoped he would, he had arranged daily fights. And she found that she was actually enjoying the fights. Not only was it the only time she was allowed to leave her room, but she was no longer reliant on Pavlov's needles to bring forth the warm feeling. All she needed was the thrill of the fight, and a particular good kill would have her smiling for hours.

Having just turned 14, she was still growing rapidly. She could feel herself changing, and it confused her. She did not dare talk to Dr. Pavlov about it. He would just conduct experiments on her, but some of the changes were too obvious to try and hide from him, like her growing breasts.

Other changes were internal. She sometimes had a strong urge to touch herself underneath her blanket at night, and sometimes, when she was looking out at some of the older kids outside her window, she even wished that they would touch her in the same way. It was extremely confusing, but absolutely not something she would be talking to Dr. Pavlov about.

She finally stopped banging her head on the table and decided to take a shower. She had been doing that a lot lately. She did not know why, probably because she did not have anything better to do.

Standing under the shower, she noticed how all the children outside her window suddenly started running in the same direction and disappeared through a doorway. She had seen them behaving strangely many times, but this was different.

A moment later, an earsplitting alarm started howling and all the doors in the room outside her window opened. Suddenly, children started pouring through the doors before disappearing through the same exit that the others had taken.

Zero turned off the shower, toweled off and put her clothes on quickly. She ran to her window, slammed two hands on the glass and pressed her sore forehead against it. She didn't want to miss a single detail. It seemed like something important was going on outside.

The alarm continued to howl. It didn't exactly help her get over her headache. Then she heard a series of loud bangs, and she felt the glass vibrating.

"What is going on?" she shouted to no avail. She was all alone.

There was another loud explosion, and the window vibrated so much that Zero thought it would shatter. Unfortunately, it didn't.

There was a single loud beep, and Zero whirled around to see the door to her room opening. But the hallway outside was empty. As soon as the door was all the way open, an even louder alarm started.

 _"_ _Subject Zero is loose!"_ someone shouted through the loudspeakers.

Zero looked around her empty room. She was all by herself and the door was open. Could this be real? Sensing that this was her opportunity to see the world outside, she hurried out of the door before it was closed again.

She slowly walked down the hallway, barefoot and with wet hair. It was surreal to be outside her room without an escort.

A door further down the hallway opened, and two guards rushed through. They were holding rifles, and immediately pointed them at Zero.

"Go back in your cell, Zero!" one of them shouted.

She was scared and just about to just turn around and hide under her desk back in the safety of her room.

But this was her opportunity, unlike any she had ever had before.

"No," she said, stomping determinedly with her naked foot.

The two guards slowly moved forward, pointing their rifles at her.

"Zero!" the same guard shouted again. He sounded very angry. "Go back inside, now!"

She had begun to glow, bathing the hallway in blue.

"Take this collar off," she said, pointing to the metal ring around her neck.

The guard shook his head. "Go back!"

Zero moved her hand quickly, and he was slammed into the wall and slumped to the ground.

The other guard fired his rifle, but Zero held out her arms and created a barrier, like a giant blue bubble, around herself. The bullets lost their momentum and fell to the ground.

The guard looked scared.

"Take it off!" Zero shouted, and the rifle flew out of the guards hand and shattered against the wall. "TAKE IT OFF!"

The guard reached his hands in the air. "I can't! You'll need Dr. Pavlov," he spoke quickly.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"I don't know," the guard replied.

Zero moved her hand quickly upwards, and the man shot up into the ceiling, breaking his neck. His body fell back down, and Zero quickly ran out of the door the two guards had come through. She could hear her heart pounding along with the pitter-patter of her feet against the cold floor.

Nothing looked familiar and she didn't know where she was. She had only ever been to the labs and the arena, so it didn't take long for her to lose her bearings in the maze-like halls.

 _"_ _Warning all Cerberus personnel. Subject Zero is loose. I repeat. Subject Zero is loose. Facility-wide order: Switch to tranquilizer ammunition. This is an order: Tranquilizer ammunition only!"_

Zero rounded a corner just as the message finished and surprised a guard who was in the process of exchanging his ammunition for tranquilizer rounds.

"Hey!" he yelled, but she had already tackled him to the ground, pulled his sidearm out of its holster and shoved the barrel into his mouth, preventing him from calling backup.

"Pavlov?" she asked, sitting on the man's chest with his own pistol resting on his tongue.

He shook his head, and Zero pulled the trigger. She was surprised by the way it felt when she fired the pistol, and she almost dropped it. She decided to leave it on the guard's body and continued through the facility.

Running through an open door, she suddenly found herself in the arena. She had entered from the opposite site of the room of the entrance she usually used.

The room was a chaos of children and guards fighting each other. There were bodies all over the floor, mostly children in grey uniforms. It looked like they had been gunned down.

"Zero!" a boy shouted. He was fighting two guards with batons.

She paused. She hadn't heard any of the other children calling her anything other than Monster, Freak or Bitch for years.

"Zero!" the boy shouted again, before one of the guards managed to hit him square in the face with his baton.

Another guard noticed her, just standing there in the entrance, and he quickly raised his rifle and fired at her. She had no idea if he was using tranquilizer ammunition or not. In either case, she quickly raised a barrier and held it until the guard's rifle stopped firing. She then sent a shockwave into the crowd, ripping both guards and children to pieces.

A group of children started running towards her. She instinctively threw them away and sent a series of shockwaves through the room, destroying most of the people in there and scattering the rest.

Even more children came running towards her, but she caught them in a singularity, which she then detonated, spreading their little body parts throughout the room.

A door on the opposite side of the room opened and Dr. Pavlov entered the arena along with two guards. He looked across the room and noticed Zero. She saw him pulling the remote control for her collar out of his pocket, but before he could press the button, Zero had disappeared in a flash of blue light and reappeared right in front of him, knocking the remote out of his hand.

Before the two guards could react, she had lifted them both into the air, slammed them together and let them fall back down to the ground right behind Dr. Pavlov, who stood frozen with his empty hand outstretched.

"Zero," he said, "It's me."

He held his hand out to her, as if he was inviting her to take it so he could just follow her back to her room.

Zero reached up and wrapped her long, slender fingers around his hand. Pavlov smiled, until she broke his wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, dislocating his shoulder with a loud popping noise.

Pavlov screamed and fell to his knees in front of her.

"Don't move," she whispered in his ear and bent down to pick up the remote control that Pavlov had dropped on the floor.

She could still hear the children and the guards fighting in other parts of the facility, but she had the arena and Dr. Pavlov all to herself.

The remote control was small and had a dial with six different settings. She assumed that could be used to control the strength of the shock. Another button was labeled with a lightning bolt. That had to be the actual trigger mechanism. And the last button, the smallest, was green with a symbol that could look like an open collar.

She held the remote right in front of Pavlov's face.

"Is this how I take it off?" she asked, pointing to the green button.

She did not want to risk shocking herself to unconsciousness, so she wanted to be sure that she was pressing the correct button.

"Yes," sobbed Pavlov.

Zero twisted his arm a little further, and he screamed. "Are you sure?"

"YES!" he cried.

To minimize the risk, Zero turned the dial to the lowest setting and pressed the green button. There was a soft click, and she could remove the collar. Being free from this device that had been strapped to her neck for four years, a constant threat of being tortured or knocked out, was amazing.

She rubbed her neck and enjoyed that she could rotate her head without the metal pinching her skin.

"Zero," Pavlov whispered between his quick breaths. "Zero… Please… You have to understand..."

But Zero didn't want to hear Pavlov begging for his life. She just needed him to show her the way out. So she ripped his jacket and his shirt off without any consideration for Pavlov's dislocated shoulder and broken wrist. His neck was too thick for the collar, but she was able to place it tightly around his bicep.

"Let's see how this works," she said, turned the dial to level four and pressed the button.

Dr. Pavlov rolled around on the floor in violent spasms until Zero realized that she had to turn off the collar by pressing the button again.

"Oops," she said gleefully, noticing how Pavlov had bitten his tongue and was bleeding profusely from his mouth.

She kicked him between the legs. An area, she had learned through her many fights in this very room, where boys were very sensitive. She did not know why. But it seemed to work on Dr. Pavlov, who doubled over and coughed, spitting blood out onto the floor.

Zero gave him another burst of electricity, but made sure to stop before Pavlov lost consciousness. On his arm, she could see the skin reddening around the collar, and she wondered how her own neck looked where the collar had sat.

"Get up!" she said, biotically lifting the doctor to his feet. "And take me to the other world."

"The other world?" he cried. He could barely speak with his bitten tongue and so much blood in his mouth.

"Get me out of here!" she yelled and held up the remote control in a threatening manner, just as he had done to her almost daily since she was 10 years old. "WALK!"

Pavlov started limping out of the arena, and Zero followed.

They walked through the station, and wherever they met guards, doctors or children, Zero murdered them all. She wanted to destroy everyone. She could barely control herself, having to walk right behind Dr. Pavlov. She wanted to kill him, right there and then. But she had no idea how to get out on her own.

She could feel her head throbbing and her vision was blurred. She was losing control of her temperament, and the constant howling of the alarm and the flashing lights were not helping at all.

"This way," Pavlov said, limping around a corner.

"SHUT UP!" Zero shouted, trying to cover her ears.

The shirtless Pavlov stopped and looked back at her. She was fighting against a thousand inner voices, screaming at her to kill him immediately.

"SHUT UP!" she shouted again, ripped a loudspeaker down from the wall and smashed it to pieces. "SHUT UP!"

Two children came running around a corner, and Zero used her powers to pull them towards her. She strangled them both, pretending they had Dr. Pavlov's face. The violence made her feel better, and she was able to push Pavlov forward without murdering him.

Finally, they reached a huge door, and Dr. Pavlov stopped.

"This is it," he said, pressed a button and the door opened slowly.

Zero was hit by a wall of hot, moist air and a thousand different smells that she had never encountered before. It was a greater sensory overload than she could handle, and various objects in the reception next to the entrance started floating towards the ceiling.

She took a few deep breaths and calmed herself, and the datapads, coffee mugs and office chairs that were floating around inside the offices fell back down.

She turned to Pavlov, who seemed to have realized that this was it for him.

"What is Cerberus?" she asked him, doing everything she could to resist ripping him to shreds. "Tell me, and I will make it quick."

But Dr. Pavlov never got to say a word. A group of guards had caught up with them, and as soon as they came around the corner, they shot Pavlov right in the face.

"No!" Zero screamed. "He was mine!"

She threw away the remote to the now useless collar and put up a barrier to protect herself from the guards' bullets. She was so angry, she couldn't even concentrate enough to count the number of guards. She waved her hand, and Pavlov's body flew through the air, taking out one of the guards. Zero used the commotion to close the distance between herself and the remaining guards. She twisted one's neck and used his rifle to kill the rest.

Pavlov's dead body was lying on top of the guard, who was still groaning. Zero quickly crushed his windpipe by stomping on his neck. Then she picked up Pavlov's body and dragged him back to the entrance, where she placed him, sitting up against the wall by the reception. She plunged two fingers into his bloody mouth and used the blood to write 'Cerberus?' across his naked chest. She did not know why she did it, but she felt that he owed her an explanation.

She then hurried outside and was once again overwhelmed by seeing, feeling, smelling and hearing all these things that she had never experienced before.

There was no ceiling above her, only sky. And hanging up there, shining so bright that it hurt her eyes to look at it, was the sun. The feeling of its warm rays on her pale face was amazing.

She breathed in the air. It had a nice smell, and she fully enjoyed it filling her lungs. Outside was great! There were enormous green plants and bird noises instead of flashing lights and beeping alarms.

She started running through the grass on her bare feet, enjoying how soft and warm it was, compared to the cold floors on the inside. She could even appreciate how the blades of grass tickled her.

She ran far away from the entrance, but stayed along the perimeter of the building. Finally, she laid down on her back, hidden in the tall grass, and she started crying. She cried and cried, not quite sure why, she was so happy.

It was too hot outside for her uniform, and she quickly pulled off her pants and her jacket and left them in the grass. Just wearing her panties and t-shirt, she jumped up and continued to run along the perimeter of the facility. Eventually, she came to a large open space where rows of weird-looking machines stood. They all had the same logo on the side. The logo that had also been on her uniform. She saw a doctor running out of the facility, climb into one of the machines. A few seconds later, the machine started floating off the ground until it flew straight up into the sky.

"Whoa," Zero said, sneaking closer.

She had just figured out a way to get far away from the facility. Keeping her head low, she ran to the nearest machine and climbed in just like the doctor had done. On the inside, there was a single seat in the front and several rows of seats in the back. She sat down in the front seat and looked at the abundance of buttons in front of her.

"Do I have to fly myself?" she sighed. She was getting a headache just from trying to count the number of buttons in front of her.

There was also a vertical stick. Zero grabbed it, and the buttons in front of her lit up.

 _"_ _Underage operator detected,"_ a female voice said. _"Would you like to activate auto-pilot?"_

Zero jumped in her seat. "Who are you?"

 _"_ _I am your shuttle VI. Would you like me to fly for you today, miss? I must remind you that it is against Cerberus regulations for minors to operate shuttles."_

Zero nodded. "Um, yes. Fly for me!"

 _"_ _Where to, miss?"_

"Away!"

 _"_ _Is there an emergency?"_ the shuttle VI asked.

"YES!" Zero shouted frustratedly. She wanted to punch the machine.

 _"_ _Acknowledged. Prepare for takeoff to Pragia orbit."_

Zero screamed, as she thought someone had grabbed her from behind, but it was just an automatic safety harness, holding her tightly in her seat while the shuttle took off.

A few minutes later, the safety harness finally released her, and Zero climbed onto her seat and looked down.

"Shit!" she shouted and sat back down. "That's a long way down. Where are we?"

 _"_ _We are currently orbiting the planet Pragia in the Dakka system,"_ the lady inside the machine said. _"The surface is approximately 300 kilometers below us."_

"Fuck me," Zero sighed. "Where can I go?"

 _"_ _There are no other habitable planets in this system,"_ the shuttle VI answered.

"What about another system?" Zero asked without knowing exactly what was meant by 'system'.

 _"_ _We do not have sufficient fuel to leave the system,"_ the VI warned.

"Fuck!" Zero cursed. "Just get me as far away from this place as possible!"

 _"_ _Warning: Spending all our fuel would leave the shuttle dead in space. Eventually, we would run out of oxygen as well, and any humans onboard would suffocate. Are you sure you wish to proceed?"_

"Yes!" Zero shouted.

 _"_ _Acknowledged,"_ the VI said, and the shuttle left Pragia's orbit.

Zero crawled to the back of the machine and laid down on the first row of seats. She tried to fall asleep, satisfied with the machine flying on its own. But sleep didn't come easily. She couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened, Dr. Pavlov, the new exciting world she had discovered and the mysterious Cerberus.

Eventually, she did fall asleep and didn't wake up until she heard a loud alarm. For a brief moment, she thought she was back at the facility.

 _"_ _Warning! Warning!"_ the shuttle VI announced. _"The shuttle is being boarded."_

Zero jumped to her feet. Had the adults caught up with her?

The door in the side of the shuttle opened and a sharp light blinded her.

"It's just a kid," someone shouted, as several dark silhouettes entered.

Zero backed up against the other side of the shuttle.

"It's okay," one of the dark silhouettes said.

Then someone turned on the light in the shuttle, and Zero screamed. In front of her stood three tall monsters. They had four eyes and greenish skin.

"Easy, easy," one of them said. "Have you never seen a batarian before, human?"

* * *

 _Author's notes:_

Thank you for reading. If you liked it, make sure to follow this story so you will be alerted when part 2 is published. Once again, I strongly recommend reading 'Biotic Beginnings' as well. If you like this story and especially if you liked 'Biotic Beginnings', I would also recommend following me (10tonsoffun). I will be putting out one-shots that are spin-offs of 'Biotic Beginnings' in the future. So follow me to make sure you are alerted when that happens.

Oh, and make sure to leave me a review. They are my pink liquid injection.


	2. Jack

Jack

 _Somewhere in the Dakka System – 2175 CE_

Zero sat down on a bench in front of the three tall, four-eyed aliens, batarians they called themselves. They had moved her shuttle into their ship and given her a blanket. Wearing just panties and a t-shirt had been fine down on Pragia, but now she was freezing cold.

"We usually try to stay away from humans," the batarian named Roku said. He was their leader. "We don't like your kind very much."

Zero pulled the blanket tighter around herself. She was shivering.

"I don't like humans either," she stammered.

The three batarians laughed.

"Where were you going?" Roku asked. "We don't usually see shuttles all the way out here."

Zero shrugged. She had no idea where she was going.

"I just want to disappear," she said.

Roku nodded thoughtfully, and one of the other batarians whispered something in his ear. He nodded again.

"We can take you far away," Roku finally said. "To a place where nobody knows who you are."

She nodded eagerly. "Where?"

Roku smirked. "To Utopia."

"How will people treat me there?" Zero asked.

"They will be very happy that we brought you there," Roku said, and the two other batarians laughed. "They might even reward us for bringing you all the way to Utopia."

"So they will be happy to see me?" she asked.

"Very," Roku promised. "A young girl like you will be greatly appreciated at Utopia."

Zero nodded. She didn't have any plans, so she might as well go to Utopia with the batarians. So far, they hadn't even slapped her yet. They couldn't be so bad.

She was given a small cabin on the ship, and one of Roku's assistants brought her a plate of food. It didn't look like anything she had ever been served before. She had a taste, but quickly spat it back out. The slimy consistency almost made her vomit.

She noticed how Roku and his assistants locked the door to her cabin when they left, but didn't think more on it. After all, they didn't know anything about her, and she was used to being locked up anyway.

The batarians didn't know anything about her powers. She was almost certain she could break down the door to her cabin if she wanted to. But the batarians didn't have to know that.

She spent several nights in her cabin, satisfied with just sleeping and trying to eat the batarians' disgusting food. However, she realized how much she missed the arena fights. She needed that sensation of her blood boiling in her veins and the arousal of a good kill.

When Roku entered her cabin one morning, she was tempted to attack him, just to soothe the itching in her fingertips.

"We are here," Roku said before Zero could fulfil her fantasy.

"Utopia?" she asked, shaking her head to calm herself.

Roku nodded and motioned for her to follow him out of the cabin. She was still just wearing her panties and t-shirt. She needed a shower and fresh clothes. But she would probably be able to find those things at Utopia.

She followed Roku off the ship, through a long narrow tube and entered a large room on the other side. She had expected something that was outside. She had expected sunshine and plants. This just looked like another, larger spaceship.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Utopia," Roku answered. "It's a space station."

This wasn't exactly what she had had in mind. In fact, this place just looked like a dirtier version of the facility she had just escaped from.

Roku led her into another room, and Zero suddenly felt tiny. She and Roku were standing alone in the center of a circular room. It was like standing in the bottom of a tall cylinder. The ceiling seemed impossibly high, and she was surrounded by rows and rows of balconies. The door behind her seemed to be the only entrance to the ground floor. The balconies had their own individual doors. Zero saw a few of them open as people entered and exited the room.

From the balconies, she felt hundreds of eyes peering down on her. Some of the faces were human, others looked like blue women with strange hair. Most of them were batarians.

She was about to ask Roku what was going on. This room almost looked like some sort of arena. Did he want her to fight? He didn't even know about her powers. Before she could ask Roku, a batarian in a shiny suit stood up on one of the balconies and pounded a large hammer into the banister until the conversation on the rest of the balconies died down.

"Our next item," he announced loudly, smiling out at the other balconies, "is a human female. 13 years old…"

"I'm fourteen!" Zero shouted, realizing that the batarian was introducing her.

A few among the crowd chuckled, and the batarian continued. "She is young and innocent. She should be worth quite a lot to some of you." He smiled towards the balconies on Zero's left side, "I'm looking at you, sex traders."

Again, the people on the balconies laughed, and Zero, who still had no idea what was going on, looked around in confusion.

"Five hundred," a batarian on one of the lower balconies yelled, raising his hand.

"Sit down, Bulkan, you stingy son of a bitch," the batarian with the hammer shouted back. "This item should be worth at least 20,000."

"10,000," someone shouted from another balcony.

"12,000!"

"15,000," Bulkan shouted with a sour facial expression. "And no more for that scrawny human."

"18,000," one of the blue women lazily said, leaning back in her seat.

"25,000," a voice from the balconies all the way up under the ceiling declared.

"30,000!" the blue woman replied.

Zero looked around in confusion. She didn't understand what these numbers were.

"Are you selling me?" she asked Roku, but he was too busy trying to keep up with the number, which just kept rising.

"53,000!" a man with long black hair and a moustache finally shouted.

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, and the batarian with the hammer started looking around at the other balconies. "Anyone higher?"

When nobody said any anything, he slammed his hammer down again. "Sold to Captain Mirusa for 53,000 credits!"

So Roku w _as_ selling her! She looked up at the batarian, who just smiled back at her. "Thank you, little girl," he said, ruffling her hair.

The door behind them opened, and while Roku was walking out of the room, two batarian guards entered and grabbed Zero's arms. They started dragging her towards the door, but she resisted. One of them slapped her, and Zero felt all her pent up frustrations from not fighting for a few days being released.

She thrusted her hand upwards, and the guard who had slapped her flew straight up through the cylindrical room, until he turned and started falling back down. Zero slipped out of the second guard's grip, kicked him in the knee to bring him to her level and snapped his neck just as the first guard hit the floor with a dull thud.

The room was completely quiet, and Zero stood in the middle of it all, panting while the blue aura around her hands slowly faded.

Roku came running back into the room, stepping over the guard with the broken neck. He continued past Zero and waved his arms up at the batarian with the hammer.

"She's a biotic!" he shouted. "She's worth a lot more than 53,000!"

"Then why, Captain Roku, did you not inform the buyers that you were selling a biotic?" the batarian with the hammer asked. He seemed amused, considering how Zero had just murdered two of his guards.

"I want another round of bidding!" Roku demanded.

The batarian with the hammer looked up at Captain Mirusa, who just smirked and shook his head. "I'm afraid the hammer has fallen," he said.

Roku spun around and stomped back to Zero with gritted teeth.

"Why didn't you tell me you were a biotic!?" he shouted into her face.

She pushed him away, and Roku slid across the floor.

As soon as he stopped, he pulled out his pistol and pointed it back at Zero. There was a loud bang, and the gun was blasted out of his hand. Zero looked up and saw Captain Mirusa leaning out over the railing, holding a long rifle with an enormous scope.

"I'm afraid I can't allow you to damage my property," he said to Roku, who was sitting on the floor, rubbing his sore fingers.

Roku snarled up at the human and glared at Zero.

"I should have let you die out there, you little bitch!"

Zero lifted him into the air and slowly pulled him closer until he was hanging with his head down right in front of her. She looked into his four eyes.

"Yes, you should," she whispered so only Roku would hear it and slammed him into the floor, breaking his neck.

There were very few reactions on the balconies, as Zero spun around herself, expecting someone else to attack her.

"Good luck with that one," she heard the batarian with the hammer say to Captain Mirusa.

-X-X-X-

 _Nara – A few hours later (2175 CE)_

Zero sat in front of Captain Mirusa in his private cabin. He was slowly stroking his moustache as he looked across his table at his new property.

"This is my ship," he said. "Her name is Nara. I am Captain Max Mirusa."

Zero looked around the cabin. "The ship has a name?"

"Of course," he said. "You don't know much about the world, do you?"

Zero shrugged. "I know what I know."

Mirusa nodded and tied his long hair into a ponytail similar to Zero's.

"The place we just left, Utopia, do you know what that is?"

She shook her head.

Mirusa smiled. "It's a slave market. People like me buy and sell people like you there."

"People like me? But I am not a slave," she objected.

The captain looked at her dirty clothes and her messy ponytail. He leaned forward with an amused smile. "Are you sure?"

"Who are people like you?" Zero asked. "You said that people like you sell and buy people like me. Who are people like you?"

Mirusa laughed.

"Some would call me a pirate, but I see myself as an entrepreneur. Basically, I tend to get myself involved in anything that might earn me credits."

"Like what?"

"Like slave trade," he said, winking at her. "To be honest, when I bought you, I thought that you might bring in a minor profit from one of the brothels on Omega. But after your little show, it looks like I've made myself one hell of a deal."

Zero had no idea what a brothel or Omega was.

"That was a very impressive display back at Utopia," Mirusa said, smiling and drumming his fingers on the table. "So I am going to keep a slave on my ship for the first time in my career."

"But I don't want to be a slave!" Zero complained.

Mirusa laughed. "I love your attitude!"

Zero glared at him. She didn't care how much he liked her. She would not be his slave. She could feel her fingertips beginning to tingle, and she saw her reflection in Mirusa's wall mirror. She was glowing.

"Calm down, calm down," the captain said, holding out his empty hands. "I want you to be part of my crew."

"What does that mean?" Zero asked. She was very suspicious of Mirusa. After all, Roku had seemed nice in the beginning as well.

"If you fight for me, I will pay you," he said. "And I will teach you everything worth knowing about the galaxy."

Zero sucked on a strand of her hair while she thought about Mirusa's suggestion. Without knowing exactly what a brothel was, she found the idea of joining Mirusa's gang more compelling.

"I will join your crew," she finally said.

Mirusa clapped his hands together and smiled. "Excellent. I knew I would hit the jackpot at Utopia one day."

"Hit the what?"

"Jackpot," he repeated. "God, you have so much to learn!"

"I am the jackpot?" she asked insecurely.

He laughed. "Most definitely!"

Mirusa pulled two bottles out of a refrigerator and handed her one of them. "This is probably your first beer, but you might as well get used to it. You and I are drinking to our agreement."

Zero noticed how Captain Mirusa twisted the cap off his bottle and copied him. He held out his bottle, and she looked at him in confusion.

"Cheers," he said, wriggling his outstretched bottle.

Zero looked from his face, down to the bottle and back to his face.

"You're supposed to touch my bottle with yours and say 'cheers'," he said.

Zero quickly did as he said and drank.

"Do you like it?" Mirusa asked when Zero didn't immediately spit out the beer.

She nodded and had another sip.

He laughed. "You and I will get along just fine. What is your name by the way?"

She was just about to answer 'Subject Zero', but she hesitated. This was her chance for a new identity. She hated everything about that name. There were so many bad memories attached to it, and she had known, since the adults had begun teaching her math, that Zero meant nothing. It all seemed like a joke to them. They had called her 'nothing' because that was what they wanted her to think that she was.

"My name was Zero," she eventually said. "But you can call me Jack."

"Zero?" Mirusa repeated.

"Don't ever call me that," she said. "I just want to be called Jack."

The captain looked confused. "Okay… But why Jack? You do realize that is not a very normal name for a girl?"

"You said I was the jackpot. So why can't I just be called Jack?"

"I guess you can," he said.

"I don't care what other girls call themselves," she said and stood up. "My name will be Jack from now on. Until I think of something else."

Mirusa nodded and rose from the table. "Come. Let's find you a bed and some clothes. I think we have some from a freighter we boarded last week."

After finally having had a shower, Jack stood in the bathroom, looking in the mirror at herself. She had put on the clothes that Captain Mirusa had given her. She had been handed a pile of panties, a few t-shirts and a couple of black one piece suits.

She tied her hair into a ponytail and studied her reflection. There were a few bruises on her face and on her neck, but that was not unusual at all. But something seemed to have changed. It was more than just her new clothes. She thought that she looked more adult. Something had changed, but she was not sure exactly what it was. Maybe it was just because she felt that, even though she had just been sold as a slave, she was making more decisions for herself than she had ever done in her life.

She put on the shoes that Mirusa had given her. They were a little big, but the captain was certain she would grow into them.

She was not sure exactly what to think of this Max Mirusa. Although he laughed about her knowledge of the outside world, she actually believed him when he said that he wanted to teach her about it. Much like the adults back at the facility, he seemed to enjoy watching her fight, and he would even pay her to do it. She was familiar with the concept of credits, and she couldn't wait to have her own, even though she still had no idea what to do with them. Perhaps she could buy better shoes.

Jack still didn't trust Mirusa. Not at all. Perhaps she would never fully trust another adult. His interest in her powers reminded her too much of Dr. Pavlov, and the fact that he had bought her as a slave was not easily forgotten. She would keep an eye on him. If she had to, she could just kill Mirusa and his entire crew and start over somewhere else.

She walked back through the ship to the crew sleeping quarters that Mirusa had shown her earlier. It was a liberating experience, walking around freely. For the first time in her life, she could walk around without being either chased or escorted. Even on Roku's ship, she had been confined to her little cabin, but on Nara, she was free to go wherever she wanted.

Opening the door to the sleeping quarters, she heard soft snores from the rows of bunk beds. Mirusa's crew consisted of about 30 pirates. All of them were human, and all of them were males. Most of them were sleeping, and Jack quietly located an empty bed in the far corner of the room. From the bed above her, she heard one of the men coughing. She quickly took off her clothes except for the panties and the t-shirt and crawled into bed.

From across the room, she heard one of the pirates quietly talking in his sleep. He was saying some gibberish about 'asari' and something called 'C-Sec'. She would have to ask Mirusa what those words meant. Another man was now snoring so loudly that Jack, who had basically grown up in a sensory deprivation tank, in a soundproof room with no one to keep her company, thought she would never fall asleep. But eventually she did.

The next morning she woke up and gasped as a group of about ten men were standing next to the bed, looking down at her.

"Who is she?" one of them asked.

"She's the slave the captain bought at Utopia," one of the others answered and pulled Jack's covers away.

The men stood around the bed, looking down at her, lying there in her t-shirt and panties. She slowly stood up in front of them.

"Are we taking her to Omega?" a big, muscular man asked, as he slowly walked around Jack to look at her from all angles.

Jack pulled on the bottom of her t-shirt so it was covering as much as possible.

"No," one of the pirates said. "Mirusa wants her to stay on the ship."

The muscular man, who had made it all the way around Jack, stuck his hand up under her t-shirt and touched the outside of her panties.

Jack gasped, completely shocked that he would touch her like that.

The man moved his hand down her thigh. "The captain is such a generous man," he grunted and started moving his hand back up. "He has given us a fresh one this time. So fresh and smooth…"

Jack squeezed her thighs together, trapping his hand between them.

"Ooh," he chuckled. "A feisty one."

A few of the other pirates laughed, but quickly stopped when Jack grabbed the man's other arm and broke three of his fingers without batting an eye. She would show them just how feisty she was.

The muscular man screamed and freed his healthy hand from Jack's thighs and grabbed his broken fingers.

"You fucking bitch," he shouted and tried to grab Jack, who lifted him into the air and prepared to throw him across the room.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" Mirusa shouted, entering the room.

Jack used her powers to pull the captain closer, until he too was suspended in the air right in front of her.

"Is this what you bought me for?" she panted furiously, nodding towards the pirate with the broken fingers. "I am going to kill all you fuckers!"

"No! No!" Mirusa shouted, waving his hands defensively. "Just put me down, Zero. We can talk!"

"DON'T YOU EVER FUCKING CALL ME THAT!" she roared, the blue light around her pulsed, and Mirusa writhed in pain.

"Okay, okay… Jack! Jack!"

She took a deep breath, and Mirusa was still again, looking down at her.

"Nobody touches me unless I want them to," she hissed.

Mirusa looked at the muscular man and around to his other pirates. "You heard her," he said. "Jack is a part of the crew now!"

A few of the pirates mumbled among themselves. Some of them holstered the pistols they had been preparing to point at Jack.

"NOW PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN!" Mirusa shouted, and Jack gently lowered him to the floor. But she kept the other man hanging in the air. She felt a strong urge to kill him.

She looked at Mirusa.

"Andros is an important part of my crew," the captain said. "It would mean a lot to me if you didn't kill him."

Jack nodded. And then, while still looking at Mirusa, she slammed Andros into the ceiling and then into the floor. The man tried taking a few quick breaths, but Jack had destroyed all his internal organs, and he quickly expired.

Mirusa sighed and looked at Andros' crushed body.

"Follow me," he said to Jack.

The other pirates quickly moved aside, as Mirusa and Jack walked out of the sleeping quarters.

"What does 'asari' mean?" Jack asked as they walked towards the captain's cabin.

Mirusa spun around angrily.

"Really? You're a 14 year old girl who just murdered one of the most notorious human pirates in the Terminus Systems… In cold blood. And now you're just calmly asking me what the fuck asari means?"

She shrugged. And Mirusa sighed.

"Asari are a race of aliens. They are probably the most powerful and technologically advanced in the galaxy. There were a few at Utopia," he eventually said.

Jack nodded. "The blue women?"

Mirusa opened the door for her and showed her into his cabin. "Yes."

"What other kinds of aliens are there?" Jack asked curiously.

Mirusa pointed to a chair by the table, and she sat down.

"I will tell you later. Don't you understand that we have to talk about what just happened? You work for me now. I am the captain of Nara! You have to listen to me! You cannot kill my crew!"

Jack nodded slowly, as the captain sat down opposite her and pulled out a small cylinder from his pocket. Mirusa opened one end of the capsule and poured a line of bright red dust out on the table. Then he sucked up the dust through his nostril.

He quickly rubbed his nose and noticed the curious look on Jack's face.

"Have you ever dusted up?" he asked.

She shook her head. She didn't even know what he meant.

"This," he said, shaking the small cylinder, "is red sand. If you inhale it, it will make you feel really good, like no one can harm you. It will also affect your biotic abilities. If you got really sand-blasted, you could probably tear a frigate in half."

Mirusa's description of this red sand reminded her of the pink liquid that Dr. Pavlov had often injected her with as a reward for killing her opponents in the arena. Just thinking about that pink syringe gave her warm tingles, and she wanted to kill someone so she could have another injection.

"I want to try," she said.

Mirusa looked down at the cylinder in his hand, shrugged and poured out another line.

"You can lick it off the table, if you don't want to snort it," he said. "But it works better if it goes through the nose."

Jack nodded and inhaled the red sand in one go.

"Whoa," she said, looking back up. "My nose is itchy."

"Just wait," Mirusa said. The captain was smiling goofily at her.

Then she felt it. The warm, pleasant wave rolling through her body. It felt very much like the syringe she had had so many times. She wondered if the pink liquid was made out if this red powder.

She felt strong. Invincible. She wanted to prove herself to her captain. Nothing could stop her.

"You're a pirate, right? So let's raid someone!"

Mirusa laughed. "Soon, I promise."

-X-X-X-

 _Nara - The hourglass Nebula – One Week Later (2175 CE)_

Jack was waiting in the docking tube, pacing back on forth as she waited for Captain Mirusa to give them the order to attack. Nara had been in an hour-long exchange of fire with this turian freighter, and Jack was itching to get into a fight. According to Captain Mirusa, the turians were always a risky target. Even their civilian ships protected themselves better than most humans, he had said. That was why it had taken so long to stop the freighter.

Mirusa had guaranteed her that there would be violence once they boarded the freighter. Jack was ready. She had been looking forward to this moment for a week.

She and five of the other crew members would be the first to board the freighter. They were all waiting in the docking tube, while another crewmember was remotely hacking the door keeping them out.

It finally opened, and she heard Mirusa screaming to her through the radio earpiece he had given her. _"Go! Go! Go!"_

Jack shoved one of the other pirates out of her way, and forced her way onto the freighter. A hailstorm of bullets immediately met her, but she created a barrier and continued forward past crates and barrels while her crewmates fired their assault rifles back at the turians. Jack counted at least seven of the aliens, but continued forward, holding up her barrier.

Leaving the turians on the freight deck to her colleagues, she hurried up a flight of stairs toward the bridge. A female turian met her at the top of the stairs.

"Just take what you want," she said, holding her hands up. But Jack had already pummeled a biotically charged fist into the turian's oddly shapen jaw.

The turian slumped against a wall, and Jack ran onto the bridge, where the freighter's captain stood next to the pilot's chair, pointing a pistol at her.

"You monsters!" he shouted and started firing, but Jack quickly raised her barrier again.

The captain's pistol quickly started clicking without firing, and Jack knew it was safe to lower her barrier. The turian threw the pistol at her, but she caught it with her biotics and threw it back into his face.

The turian captain fell on the floor, and Jack quickly ended his life with two quick punches to the throat before hurrying back down to the freight deck. Fortunately, the turians had all been killed. But so had two of her crewmates. However, nobody really seemed too upset about their deaths, and neither was she.

None of the other pirates seemed to like her. Mirusa was the only one who ever really talked to her. She spent most of her time with him in his cabin, snorting red sand, drinking beers and asking questions about the galaxy.

While Jack looked around the freight deck, Mirusa came through the docking tube and inspected the bodies of his two fallen crewmembers.

"I'm going through them fast," Jack heard him say to himself.

The captain picked up a datapad on a desk next to the stairs. "Cargo list," he said, opening a document. "What do we have here? Food. We need that, but this is all dextro shit. Ah, here we are, a shipment of explosives for the Eclipse. That should be worth quite a lot."

Mirusa patted Jack on the head. "Good job," he said and turned his attention back to the cargo list.

"What about the ship itself?" she asked. "Couldn't we sell that to someone?"

"Maybe," Mirusa said. "But we've destroyed the engine and would probably have the turian military up our asses before we could get it repaired. They are almost certainly on their way here now to investigate, and trust me, we do not want to be here when they come."

While the other pirates lifted heavy crates from the freighter onto Nara, Jack levitated the explosives back through the docking tube. She gently placed them deep in the bowels of the ship and walked back to help with last of the crates. But when she came back onto the freighter, she immediately sensed that something was wrong.

The pirates stood in a circle around their captain, as they often did when Mirusa issued his orders. But this time they all had their weapons trained on him.

"This is mutiny!" Mirusa shouted, spinning around himself, glaring at his crew. "You can't do this!"

Jack sensed someone sneaking up on her, but before she could react, someone clubbed her in the head, and she fell to her knees. Then everything went black.

She opened her eyes again. The freight deck was spinning, and she felt like she was going to be sick. She was lying on the floor, and her head was throbbing horribly.

She saw Captain Max Mirusa lying on the floor a few meters from her. His long, black hair was covering his face and there were several bullet holes in his bloody shirt.

"What do we do about the bitch?" she heard one of the pirates ask.

She wanted to stand up and kill them all, but she was barely holding on to consciousness.

"Leave her for the turians," another pirate said. "Let's just get the hell out of here!"

Then the darkness engulfed her once again.

She woke up when someone shone a bright light in her face. She tried to cover her eyes with her hand, but her wrists had been tied together behind her back.

A turian in blue armor was towering over her, shining his flashlight into her eyes.

"Don't bother using your powers on me, human," he said. "Those handcuffs are designed to detain people like you."

Even if she hadn't been bound like this, Jack didn't think she would have been able to attack the turian. She was feeling very groggy.

"You are under arrest for murder and piracy, do you understand that?" the turian asked.

Jack nodded slowly. It hurt her head. She looked over at Mirusa's body.

"Was he your captain?" the turian asked. "We have been after Mirusa for a long time."

She nodded again.

"The turian started pacing back and forth. Eventually, he stopped and looked down at Mirusa's body. "That is perhaps what I hate most about you fucking pirates. No honor! No loyalty! Not even to your own captains. We see these mutinies all the time."

The turian strode over to Jack, grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her feet. But she was dizzy and fell back down. The turian picked her up again, but held onto her arm this time.

"According to Council laws, we are required to hand over underage criminals to the Alliance," he said. "But I saw the security footage, and I can guarantee you, that you are going to rot in a turian prison for the rest of your miserable life."

Jack tried to kick the turian, but she lost her balance and would have fallen over if he hadn't caught her by the front of her suit. The turian punched her, and, with her hands tied behind her back, Jack took the full force of the blow underneath her chin and she lost consciousness again.

She woke up later in a small, dark cell on a strange ship. She assumed she was in the custody of the turians. Her head was still swimming, but when she stood up, she was able to keep her balance. She was still in handcuffs, and her joints were beginning to hurt. So she bent down and stepped backwards over her handcuffs, so her hands would at least be in front of her.

She was alone in the room, but there was an entire row of cells. It didn't look like the turians had caught any of the other pirates.

The turian in the blue armor she had talked to earlier entered the room and stood in front of her cell.

"Did you kill the others?" she asked.

"Your friends? No, they were already gone when we arrived," the turians said, leaning lazily against the bars.

"They are not my friends," she growled. "I will kill them all!"

"You will not be doing anymore killing for the rest of your life, human," the turian snapped. "We are taking you to Licitron."

"What is that?" Jack asked.

"There's a turian prison in Licitron," he replied. "It's the capital of the planet Triginta Petra."

She understood that she was being punished for killing those turians on the freighter, but this was a very unusual reaction to her killing someone, she thought. Unless she attacked one of the guards back at the facility, she was never punished for violence, only rewarded.

She sat down on the bench in her cell, staring into the floor. She was foaming with anger. The mutiny of the Nara crew had destroyed her plan to steal and murder her way through life. Now it looked like she was going back to being locked up, just like she had been at the facility and on Roku's ship.

A tear landed on the floor beneath her, and she angrily wiped her face. She refused to feel sorry for herself.

"I have to pee," she told the turian, who had been smirking after seeing her cry.

The turian pointed to a bucket underneath her bench. Jack looked back at him. Did he expect her to pee in the bucket?

"Don't worry about me looking," he said. "I despise your species."

Jack did not doubt for one second that he told the truth. He would not get any pleasure out of watching her take her clothes off. Except maybe the pleasure of seeing her discomfort. So she decided that she would not show any signs of discomfort. She would not give him that pleasure.

She kicked off her shoes and pulled down her pants without hesitating. It was difficult, wearing handcuffs. She then took off her panties, dragged the bucket out from under the bench and squatted above it.

When she was done peeing, she glanced at the turian, who looked back at her with a smug smile. Instead of placing the bucket back under the bench, she threw the content out over her captor and laughed as he spat and tried to wipe his face with his talon-like hands.

Jack stopped laughing when the turian pulled out his baton and opened the door to her cell. She pressed her back against the wall and closed her eyes. She knew what was coming.

-X-X-X-

 _The Licitron Prison – Triginta Petra – Four days later (2175 CE)_

Jack sat by herself in the corner of the prison yard, watching the other inmates. Most of them were just walking around, enjoying their 20 daily minutes out in the sun. The thin atmosphere on Triginta Petra worked in the prison guards' favor. Even the smallest amount of physical activity, and the prisoners would be out of breath. Climbing the walls or even running seemed like an impossibility with this atmosphere. In fact, inmates sometimes fainted and had to be carried back inside.

Even though Jack was sitting completely still, she noticed how she was breathing much quicker than usual. If she didn't, she would begin to feel light-headed.

All the guards at the Licitron Prison were turian, but none of the inmates were. The prisoner population consisted only of humans and batarians, an equal amount of each. In the few days she had been there, Jack had already experienced the immense hatred that existed between the two races. The racial hatred even dwarfed the deep hate the guards showed towards their prisoners.

Both humans and batarians used the prison yard. But Jack had yet to see anyone fight outside. The brawlers would quickly run out of oxygen and pass out. Instead, the violence happened inside, where the guards never seemed to do much about the humans and batarians kicking the shit out of each other. Only if someone was about to be killed, they would step in.

Jack hated her human and batarian co-prisoners equally. The batarians reminded her of Roku, and they all hated her anyway just for being human. She had no reason to talk to them.

The vast majority of the human inmates were male. Pirates, mercenaries, slave traders and gang members. Not all of them had been able to control themselves when they finally found a fourteen year old girl in their midst. Three of them had tried to rape her in the showers. One of the turian guards had been watching without doing anything to help her at all. Luckily, he also didn't react when Jack ripped all three of her would-be-rapists to shreds. She had not been punished for that at all.

A few of the other prisoners who had been touching her inappropriately had been sent to the medical ward with broken bones, smashed teeth or both, but so far, she had only killed three of her fellow inmates. Still, this was a Licitron record for such a new prisoner.

Now, she found that most of the other prisoners left her alone, except the batarians who would still shout racist insults at her.

A loud bell alerted the prisoners that they had better get back inside, if they did not want the guards to beat them up. The bell only rang once, and anyone still standing in the prison yard 30 seconds later would have their pain threshold tested by however many guards were willing to whip out their batons. There were usually a dozen or more, just waiting on an excuse for beating a prisoner to a pulp.

Jack, who was still sore from the piss bucket-episode and the welcoming ceremony, where she had been knocked around for half an hour to make sure she understood the power structure between inmates and guards, had the turian military grade batons in fresh memory, so she quickly got up and hurried back inside.

Compared to the facility back on Pragia, Jack felt very free at the Licitron Prison. The prisoners were free to walk around inside the building, except at night. They had to sleep in their cells. Giving this amount of freedom to the prisoners was not a problem for the guards. The inmates only used their freedom to fight each other, and the guards didn't care about that.

Jack and the rest of the prisoners wore a metal ring around the ankle. This device constantly revealed her position within the prison to the guards, who could also use the ring to shock her. It reminded her of the collar she had worn back at the facility. But at least she didn't have to wear this one around her neck.

Jack wore a bright orange uniform, just like the rest of the prisoners. But her clothes were much too large, and she had folded up the legs on the pants so she could walk properly and ripped the arms off her shirt in order to free her hands. So far, the guards hadn't punished her for altering the uniform.

She walked through the common room where all the meals were served. The food was horrible. Even worse than what she had been served on Roku's ship. Jack looked around the room. Like her, many of the other inmates had just been out in the yard. Many of them sat down on the benches immediately, trying to catch their breath.

In the corner of the room, two inmates, a human and a batarian, were exchanging punches while the guards watched. A few other prisoners were gathering around the two fighters. Soon it would be a massive brawl, batarians against humans. It always ended like that. And then, when the guards were no longer amused, they would activate the ankle rings of all the brawlers, knocking everybody out.

Jack continued through the room. She just wanted to get back to her cell. She wanted to be alone. But then she walked past a small group of men, gathered around one of the tables.

One of them looked into the ceiling, gritting his teeth, while all the rest seemed to be looking down at his arm on the table. The man with the gritted teeth looked like he was in pain.

Jack walked a little closer. She was curious and wanted to see what they were doing to him. The man, even though he was quite obviously in pain, did not seem to be trying to hit the other men, and he was not trying to run away either.

Jack leaned a little closer, and saw that one of the men was poking the man's forearm with a needle. Occasionally, he would dip the needle in black ink before sticking it back in the man's arm. Jack moved around the group until she could see that the ink was actually forming into an image on the man's forearm, a skull. She noticed that several of the other men also had ink marks on their arms and necks. Some of them even had them on their faces.

She came back and watched the group of men every day for a week. It was always the same man controlling the needle while the others took turns being poked. She picked up that the ink drawings were called tattoos, and she knew immediately that she wanted one.

As the days went by, she got braver and moved closer and closer to the group, until one day she suddenly found herself sitting around the table with the rest of them, watching as the man slowly moved his needle in and out of another inmates skin. When he was done, Jack held out her arm.

"Can I have one?" she asked.

A few of the other prisoners laughed, but Jack ignored them, keeping her eyes on the man with the needle.

"How old are you?" the man asked.

"14," she answered. "Does it matter? I'm here with the rest of you, am I not?"

The man smirked. "Trust me, I don't care if I tattoo a 10 year old or 100 year old. But for your own sake, you should know what you're doing."

"I want a tattoo," she said stubbornly.

The man grabbed her wrist and the needle hovered above her pale forearm. "Okay," he said, holding on tightly to her wrist. "What do you want? Remember, it will always be there."

"A teddy bear, perhaps? Or maybe a butterfly," one of the men joked.

"Jack," Jack said.

"What?" the man with the needle said.

"Write the name 'Jack'," she demanded.

The man shrugged and began.

Jack didn't know why some of the men looked like they were being tortured while getting tattoos. Had they never had a needle stuck in them before? Getting a tattoo was nothing compared to what she had endured in her childhood.

When the tattoo was done, she looked down and read 'Jack'. The letters followed a long scar on her forearm. It looked like the scar was underlining the text.

In the following weeks, Jack returned several times and had more tattoos made. One of them simply said 'Licitron Prison', while another portrayed a howling wolf. Every time, she would return with a new idea and leave with another tattoo. She also asked the man with the needle to just create some patterns down her legs to cover some of her scars.

Within a month, she had more tattoos than most of the hardened criminals. The man with the needle had stopped asking her if she was sure when she came to him with a new idea. She wanted whatever she wanted, and the fact that the tattoos were permanent didn't bother her at all.

She had worked out a deal with the tattoo artist. Jack would protect him from the batarians, and he would give her all the tattoos she asked for. Other prisoners had to pay him, usually with the least horrible portions of their meals.

Jack was once again sitting in her corner of the prison yard. But this time she wasn't looking at the other inmates, but at her arms, thinking about what her next tattoo might be. She had a few scars around her wrists that she wanted to cover.

The yard was very busy, quite a lot busier than usual, which was unusual since it was raining. Jack didn't care, she wanted to be outside as much as possible. Apparently, so did a lot of the other prisoners. Both humans and batarians filled up the yard, and extra guards had been posted on the walls and in the towers surrounding the prison. The turians wore masks that allowed them to breathe normally in the thin atmosphere. This gave them a huge advantage over the prisoners in case there was a riot.

Jack was bored. Having tattoos made was about the only activity she enjoyed. She could start a fight with another prisoner, but with her biotics, a fight against an unarmed man wouldn't provide much entertainment. If she wanted a challenge, she would have to fight the guards. The only problem was the device around her ankle. If she attacked the guards, she would be shocked immediately.

"Boom!"

One of the guard towers disappeared in an enormous ball of flames. Jack nearly fell over. What the hell was going on. In the prison yard, inmates were shouting and cheering.

Then a formation of blue shuttles flew over the prison, destroying two more towers.

"It's the Blue Suns!" someone shouted, as the shuttles turned around to take down the remaining towers.

The turian guards came running out of the prison and started shooting up at the shuttles. But it didn't seem like their rifles were doing much damage.

Jack pressed herself into her corner, looking up at the grey sky, waiting for the shuttles to make another pass. The rain was still pouring down, and more and more guards were rushing out into the yard.

Then the shuttles came back, and machine gun fire came down on the guards, just like the rain. The turians were mowed down, and shuttles started landing in the yard shortly thereafter.

Men in blue armor carrying assault rifles jumped out of the shuttles and ran through the yard towards the main entrance. They wore helmets that covered their entire heads and helped them breathe. Jack was certain they were human though, she could tell by the way they moved. Jack tried to stay hidden in the corner, but the men quickly found her and placed her in a long line with the other prisoners in the middle of the yard.

She heard shots from inside the prison, and groups of prisoners came running out. "They're shooting all the guards!" they cheered, until they remembered how hard it was to breathe outside and calmed down.

The line of prisoners in the middle of the yard grew and grew. Finally, one of the men in blue armor stepped onto one of the shuttles and signaled for silence. He was obviously the leader.

"Dear prisoners," he shouted. "I am Captain Baker of the Blue Suns. We are here to free you!"

The prisoners began cheering wildly, but Baker was not done.

"Sadly," he said. "We only have room for about a third of you."

The inmates quieted for a moment. Then a few started running towards the Blue Suns' shuttles, but they were quickly gunned down. Captain Baker continued as if nothing had happened.

"We could just pick out a random third and kill the rest," he said, "but we want someone who is worth freeing. So we will arrange a little audition."

The audition, Jack quickly found out, consisted of killing other prisoners in order to prove that you were worthy of freedom. The Blue Suns walked up and down the line of prisoners, picked pairs and asked them to kill each other. The winners would go back to the line, while the Blue Suns piled the losers' bodies in a pile in the corner of the yard.

The thin air meant that the fights were all very short. Generally, one of the prisoners would run out of air and collapse on the muddy ground, an easy kill for his opponent.

Jack hadn't been picked out for a fight yet. About a quarter of the prisoners were already lying in the pile in the corner.

One of the Blue Suns soldiers stopped in front of Jack, looked at the two batarians standing on either side of her. She brushed back her rain-soaked hair.

"What have we here?" he said. "Should we let you fight, love, or just shoot you and toss you on the pile?"

"Let me fight," she replied.

The soldier took Jack by the arm and dragged her out of the line. He placed her right next to the loser pile. "So we don't have to drag you so far," he laughed and walked back to the line to find her an opponent. He returned with a huge muscular man. Jack recognized him. He frequented the tattoo table. His name was Quinn.

The Blue Suns soldier placed Quinn in front of Jack. "Begin," he said and stepped back.

Quinn easily weighed twice as much as Jack, perhaps close to thrice as much. But Jack had her powers, and Quinn knew that. Soon the Blue Suns would know it too.

Quinn did not hesitate. He rushed forward and tried to grab Jack. The Blue Suns who were watching probably expected the frail-looking, skinny girl to be crushed completely, but Jack caught Quinn in a biotic field, lifted him into the air and slammed him back down into the ground, spraying mud all over herself and the Blue Suns soldier who had picked her out of the line. Quinn was dead, and she levitated his corpse onto the pile herself.

After that, Jack did not have to participate in any more fights. Instead, she was allowed to sit on one of the shuttles so she could watch the rest. In the end, just about twenty prisoners, some batarian, some human, were left. Most of the survivors were close to dying anyway. Many of them were severely injured, and they all had difficulty breathing.

The Blue Suns quickly shoved them into shuttles and took off. There was plenty of oxygen inside the shuttles, and Jack greedily sucked in the air. As did the two batarians who had been put in the same shuttle.

One of the Blue Suns soldiers in the shuttle took off his helmet. He was a young human with a bald head and dark eyes.

"Stick your legs out," he said to Jack and the two batarians and pulled out a pair of giant pliers.

The two batarians hesitated, so Jack stuck out her leg. The bald man grabbed on to it and removed the metal ring around her ankle with a swift movement.

"Why are you doing this?" one of the batarians, who had finally begun to breathe normally, asked.

The bald man continued to free the two batarians from their ankle rings as well. "Recruitment," he simply said, tossing the rings into a bag.

"Where are you taking us?" the other batarian asked.

The bald man smirked at the three of them. "The Citadel."

-X-X-X-

 _Bachjret Ward – The Citadel – Two Months Later (2175 CE)_

Jack stood outside a small shop in the poor part of the Bachjret Ward, waiting for the shop owner to go back inside. The asari merchant was placing apples on display in front of the shop. Finally, she turned around and carried her empty box back inside the shop. Jack looked over her shoulder and grabbed four apples before walking away quickly.

She hurried through the marketplace, but someone suddenly grabbed her shoulder. "I saw that, young lady."

Jack spun around and threw one of her stolen apples in the C-Sec officer's face. He let go off her shoulder, and she sprinted away, darting in and out between merchants and marketgoers. "Hey!" the C-Sec officer shouted behind her. A few of the people she passed tried to grab her, but she avoided their hands and used her biotics to carve a path through the crowd.

She held on tightly to her stolen lunch. This was hard work for a few apples, she should just have robbed a convenience store instead. But robbery would have brought a lot more C-Sec attention to her. As long as she just stole a handful of fruit here and there C-Sec would treat her as just another kid living on the street. And basically, that was what she was. She turned right into and alley and sat down behind a large pipe to eat her apples.

The Blue Suns had brought Jack and the other prisoners to the Citadel to boost their number of fighters before a grand attack on a series of C-Sec police stations. But C-Sec had been warned about the attack and carried out a preventive strike against the Blue Suns. This had been a huge step back for the Suns, and Jack and several other ground level 'members' had left.

With no one to take care of her or pay her, Jack was now living on the streets of the Bachjret Ward. For the first time in her life, meals were not being cooked and served for her. She had to steal. Although she was now living on the street, stealing and sleeping in dark alleys, she enjoyed the freedom. The Citadel was an amazing place, and she could go wherever she wanted, although her grubby looks were certainly not appreciated on the Presidium. Still, she enjoyed walking around the Presidium Ring, looking at the lakes, the shuttles and the rich people. She wondered if she could steal enough to become as rich as them. Perhaps she could just kill one of them and take their credits, their homes and their clothes.

Her own clothes were dirty and ripped in several places as a result of getting into fights with other homeless people. She had stolen new clothes on several occasions, but they never remained clean and intact for long.

Jack threw away the core of her apple. It landed just in front of a Keeper, who picked it up and continued down the alley. The first time she had seen one of the spider-like creatures who maintained the Citadel, she had woken up in the middle of the night, and the Keeper stood just in front of her. She had been scared out of her mind and killed the creature. She had since learned that the Keepers were absolutely harmless. In fact, they tended to act like she they did not even see her.

She quickly ate the rest of the apples. She wanted to get down to the docks. She liked watching the ships coming in. These enormous machines looked so gentle, despite their incredible size, as they glided silently to the docks.

An hour later, she sat on top of a crate, pressing her hands against the cold glass, looking out at the ship in front of her. It belonged to the Alliance. Behind it was a much larger ship, a turian one. She recognized all the logos used by the various races. Every time she came to the docks, she looked for the logo she had known her entire childhood. The logo that had been on her uniform, on the adults' uniforms and all over the facility. She was sure it had something to do with Cerberus, whatever that word meant.

She needed answers. Why had she been kept in a small room for so long, when there was such a huge, much more exciting world outside? What was Cerberus? Who was she?

But Jack never saw a ship with that logo. And she never heard anyone talk about Cerberus. She had tried asking around, but never got any answers.

Sitting on her crate, watching ships arrive and dock, she felt a strong urge to travel again. She wanted to explore even more of the Galaxy. And she wanted to fight. She missed it. Even though she was living on the street in the poorest area of the station, the Citadel was too pristine for her. The Presidium was nice, but she needed more excitement, more violence. She needed something that the Citadel just could not offer.

She wondered if she could steal one of these ships in front of her. They were very big, so there would probably be too many guards. And even if she could steal a ship, she had no idea how to fly it.

Perhaps, she thought, she could find another pirate ship and ask to join the crew. Her first experience as a pirate had ended in mutiny and imprisonment, but Captain Max Mirusa had taught her almost everything she knew about the galaxy.

Her search for the truth about her childhood would have to wait. The Citadel wasn't providing her with any answers anyway. She wanted to see more. She wanted to travel again. How and where she didn't know, but she was determined to leave the Citadel.

* * *

 _Author's notes:_

 _There you have it. Chapter two out of three in my little triology about Jack's youth. The third and final part will be out soon. This chapter will include an episode with Aria T'Loak that I described in my other story 'Biotic Beginnings'. If you have not yet read 'Biotic Beginnings', I strongly recommend that you do. It is a sequel to this triology, covering Jack's life from her employment at the Jon Grissom Academy to the end of the reaper war._

 _Once I'm done with 'The Psychotic Biotic', I will begin to work on other stories in the same universe. They will focus on some of the other characters that are in 'Biotic Beginnings'. Keep an eye out for that and follow me if you're interested._

 _Oh, and please leave a review. They are my red sand._


	3. The Psychotic Biotic

The Psychotic Biotic

 _Omega – 2177 CE_

"Good work today, Jack!" Bix told her, clapping her back.

Bix was unusual. There weren't many salarian pirates. But then again, not many 15 year old girls were pirates.

Jack handed him a beer and they sat down on a couch in the ship's lounge. Not only was Bix a pirate. He was the captain and Jack's current employer. Since she had left the Citadel, Jack had been involved with over a dozen different gangs. When she wasn't murdering, stealing or doing drugs, she was looking for a better gang to do these three things with.

She hadn't been with Bix's group for more than a month, but her salarian captain was obviously very happy to have her. She also suspected that she frightened him. But in her experience, that was not necessarily a bad thing.

The 'good work' Bix had congratulated her for as he joined her in the lounge was Jack's biggest score to date. Just like in Jack's first pirate attack, the one that ended in mutiny and her arrest, the target had been a turian freighter. To Jack and her fellow pirates' great surprise, the freighter had been carrying a considerable amount of element zero.

Eezo was ridiculously expensive, but finding a buyer could be difficult. So Bix had docked his ship at the only location where pirates could sell so much element zero without interference from the authorities. He had docked at Omega.

Most of the other pirates had left the ship to look for potential buyers. Jack never got involved in the negotiations. She was not a merchant, just the girl who relieved the previous owners of their possessions. She preferred to stay on the ship with Bix.

When the eezo was sold, she hoped they would stay at Omega for a while. Despite having been in so many gangs, Jack had never actually seen Omega. She had heard plenty about it, though. She remembered how Max Mirusa, her first pirate captain, had planned to sell her to an Omegan brothel. That was before he knew how powerful she was.

Everything she had heard about Omega sounded fantastic, and she couldn't wait to see it. But she refused to leave Bix's ship until they had been paid for all that eezo in the cargo hold.

She looked at Bix, who had been wearing a constant smirk since the eezo came onboard. The salarian was not a particularly strong captain. In fact, Jack thought he was a bit of a coward. He never helped with boarding other ships. He left that up to Jack and the other crewmembers. But it was Bix's ship, and he was a very talented hacker. Often he could disable another ship's engines without even firing his cannons, but just by hacking them from the bridge of his own ship.

Still, Jack found it hard to respect her salarian captain, and she was very seriously contemplating murdering him and the rest of the crew as soon as they had sold the element zero. With Bix's ship and all those credits, she would be able to start her own gang.

"Just how much do you think we'll be able to get for all that eezo?" she asked her captain.

Bix's grin widened, and he took a large, self-satisfied sip of his beer. "It depends… With the right buyer… We could be talking 9 digits... More than 100 million credits"

It was obvious that Bix had stumbled upon a much larger score than he could ever have dreamed of. By luck and with the help of Jack and his other employees, the salarian was about to become a millionaire. Jack smiled back at him. Bix wouldn't be a millionaire for very long if she decided to go through with her plan.

She imagined how life would be if she took all those credits for herself. She would use them to hunt down Cerberus. That was what she truly wanted. Screw the pirate's life! She could always form her own gang, as soon as she had killed everyone at Cerberus.

She had finally found out that Cerberus was the name of a pro-human organization. She did not know much more than that. Cerberus was incredibly well-hidden for an, as far as she was informed, almost infinitely powerful organization. But she would continue her hunt. And with a lot of credits, she would be able to purchase help, which she had to admit that she needed. Killing Bix and his crew was starting to look like an irresistible idea.

She didn't notice that Bix had been looking at her for some time.

"Are you okay?" he asked, still looking smug, as if this shitload of eezo had ended up on his ship because of his brilliance.

"I'm fine," she replied. "How long can it take to find a fucking buyer?"

Bix leaned back on the couch. "Days, I suspect."

He had no fucking clue.

Jack pulled on her ponytail in frustration. If this deal were to take days, she _had_ to get off the ship. Perhaps she could go and have another tattoo made. That always calmed her down, and there was no way she was leaving Omega without a new tattoo anyway.

She still had plenty of scars to cover, and although she was definitely the most heavily inked teenager she had ever met, Jack still had plenty of design ideas, and she still had a few vacant spots on her body.

Luckily, it did not take days to find a buyer. The other pirates soon returned with a human who looked way too clean for the stories that Jack had heard about Omega. Bix and the buyer disappeared into the captain's cabin. Jack waited outside with the other excited pirates.

After half an hour, Bix and the man emerged from the cabin. Jack immediately looked at the buyer's face. If he looked too happy, Bix had probably sold the eezo too cheaply. She would have to kill the human then, they could just find a better buyer and strike a more lucrative deal. But the human in the nice clothes did not walk out with a huge smile on his face, Bix did.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you," the human said, shaking Bix's hand. "My men are waiting outside your ship. We can make the transfer immediately."

Bix nodded, and the human transferred the credits from his omni-tool to Bix's.

A little later, when all the element zero had been taken off the ship, Bix gathered his entire crew in the lounge.

"We're rich!" he laughed.

"How much did we get?" his second-in-command, another salarian called Cerwin, asked impatiently.

Jack leaned forward on the couch, just as eager to hear the actual number.

"120 million credits!" Bix snickered, jumping up and down.

"Yes!" Cerwin shouted and punched the air. Several of the other pirates were just as excited.

Even Jack had to give it to Bix, 120 million seemed like a very nice number.

"Let's go and celebrate!" one of the human crewmembers, a man called Elias, said.

"Absolutely," Bix laughed.

The pirates all put on their best clothes. For Jack, that meant a pair of short leather hot pants and a small black top, showing off her midriff. She was aware that having so much skin on display could attract some unwanted attention, but that was not her problem. She would dress however she wanted, and she happened to enjoy wearing as little as possible and having most of her tattoos visible.

The pirate gang exited the ship, and Jack immediately noticed the smell. It was like someone had left food on the stove for far too long, a burnt smell. There were also other smells, sweat and urine. The air seemed to be very warm.

This was Omega, just as she had been told. Even the dirtiest, most dangerous alleys on the Citadel seemed like the Presidium Gardens compared with the streets of Omega. Drunks and junkies littered the streets, and there was a prostitute on every corner. These women were so dirty, Jack didn't know what kind of sad person would actually pay for their services. Amazingly, as they walked by, some of the women were approached by some equally nasty pirates. Not the men from Bix's crew though. They could afford better.

They ended up in front of a club called Afterlife, where Bix bribed a bouncer to let them skip the queue. Unlike other places she had been, nobody seemed to bother that Jack was just 15 years old. Omega had no laws to restrict or protect children, and Jack enjoyed that she was treated like an adult.

Inside Afterlife, loud music had the people on the dancefloor writhing their sweaty bodies to the pounding rhythm of the bass. Jack could feel it in her chest. It was drawing her towards the dancefloor.

The club was packed with people and it was extremely hot. Perhaps the heat was generated by all the dancers, or maybe the club owners kept the temperature high to sell more drinks.

Bix paid for a couple of tables for the crew to sit at, and asari waitresses dressed almost as scantily as some of the strippers, dancing around poles in various corners of the club, brought them drinks from the bar. The asari kept the alcohol flowing, and Jack made sure that she had her fair share of the cocktails.

Then the asari started bringing in various drugs. One of them carried in a giant plate with more than a hundred lines of red sand. But this looked a lot darker than the stuff she had tried so far.

"Ever dusted up before?" Elias asked, putting his arm around Jack's shoulder.

She nodded. "But this looks darker."

Elias smirked. "Oh, you're in for a treat here, Jack. You have been snorting the cheap, thinned-down version. This here is the real shit. This is genuine red sand."

Jack looked down at the plate. Many of the lines had already disappeared up the pirates' nostrils. Not wanting to miss this opportunity to try real red sand, she bent forward and took two lines in quick succession.

The drinks kept coming to the table, and the red sand made Jack thirsty. She dipped her finger in her cocktail and dragged it across the plate in the middle of the table. The red dust stuck to her wet skin, making her finger red. She then sucked on her finger.

A few more drinks and another line of red sand, and Jack could sit still no longer. As if carried on a red cloud of dust, she hovered out onto the dancefloor and began swaying her body back and forth with the rest of the crowd.

As she danced, Jack could feel her biotics flashing from time to time. Her nervous system had been completely overstimulated by the red sand, and her body was moving to the dark rhythms without any guidance from her brain whatsoever.

She had no idea how much time she spent on the dancefloor. In fact, she was barely aware that she was dancing at all. She no longer knew where she was, or how she had ended there.

Suddenly, there was a beautiful blue girl in front of her. An asari. Jack was enthralled by her movements. She laughed and danced closer to the asari, trying to copy her moves. The asari was so graceful, and looked so elegant, Jack wanted to be even closer. Before she knew it, she was dancing with the asari, who smiled back at her.

"I like your tattoos," the asari said into Jack's ear. Somehow, Jack was able to hear her voice very clearly over the loud music.

Jack was not sure how it happened, but suddenly she was kissing with the asari. Soft blue lips crashed against hers, and the asari's tongue met Jack's in a furious dance. The asari ran her fingers through Jack's ponytail and pulled it softly. Jack moaned into her mouth. She could feel the effect of the red sand wearing off slowly. But that did not make her leave the asari alone. She wanted to be with her.

A man from Bix's crew poked her on the shoulder. Jack wanted to turn around and punch him for disturbing her.

"We have a situation," he said seriously. Although he had obviously had a lot to drink, Jack could tell that something important was going on. The man was so serious, he almost seemed sober.

She left the asari, who promised to wait for her on the dancefloor, and walked back to their tables with her crewmate.

Jack sat down at the table. Bix sat on the end, looking very worried.

"What's up?" she asked. It didn't look like anyone urgently needed her help, so she was more than a little pissed off about being called off the dancefloor.

"We are being watched," Cerwin informed her.

Jack looked around. The other customers all seemed to behave like they had been the entire night. She wondered if the drugs had made her colleagues paranoid. Perhaps they were hallucinating.

She sat at the table for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen that would prove that Bix and most of his crew weren't seeing things. She didn't have to wait long.

A giant krogan walked up to their table. He was so enormously huge that Jack thought that _she_ was now hallucinating as well. The krogan was heavily armed, Jack immediately noticed. The two huge shotguns hanging on either side of his belt were hard to overlook.

"I am Patriarch," he said in a deep, rumbling voice.

The krogan clearly expected that self-introduction to have some kind of effect. But Jack had no idea who he was.

"I am representing Aria T'Loak," Patriarch continued. Some of the pirates, and Bix in particular, moved nervously. Apparently, they were familiar with this name.

Patriarch pulled one of his shotguns out of its holster and placed it casually on the table. He was more than a little threatening.

"Aria has heard about your eezo deal," Patriarch rumbled. "You are going to pay her half of the credits you made in that deal."

"Why would we do that?" Jack asked. A few of the other pirates tried to shush her.

Patriarch smirked. "You can see it as a fee for trading on Omega. Aria rules here, so she can set the fees."

"And if we refuse to pay?" Jack asked.

"Of course we will pay," Bix said.

"The fuck we will," Jack spat back at her captain. "Who the hell is this Aria anyway?"

Bix and all the other pirates were seemingly okay with this Aria T'Loak taking half of their score. Jack was furious. Just because of one scary krogan, they were prepared to cough up 60 million credits.

"Aria is the queen of Omega," Patriarch explained, as if that would settle the matter. Jack couldn't care less if Aria was the queen of the entire universe. She was not just handing over 60 million to this bitch.

"Take me to see her," she said.

Elias grabbed her wrist. "Just let it go," he begged her.

"Let go of me, you pussy!" she hissed, standing up in front of Patriarch. "Take me to her!"

The krogan laughed, a deep, booming laugh. "Are you sure you want to do this, little girl?"

She nodded, and Patriarch smirked.

Then Bix stood up at the other end of the table. "Sit down, Jack!" he said sternly. "That's an order!"

"Fuck you!" she replied and followed Patriarch away from the table.

The krogan led her through the busy nightclub, across the dancefloor and past a group of armed batarian guards. She followed Patriarch up a flight of stairs to a platform overlooking Afterlife's ground floor. On a couch, looking down at the dancefloor, an asari sat, lazily drinking a purple cocktail from a tall glass. The asari didn't even look at her.

"I thought I told you to just collect the fees, Patriarch," she said, stirring the drink with a long blue finger.

"The girl wanted to file a complaint," Patriarch rumbled, shoving Jack forward. "You wanted to meet Aria, human. There you go."

Aria finally looked at Jack.

"Fuck me, that's a load of tattoos on a child," she said.

"I'm not a child!" Jack insisted, thinking that Aria's critique was a bit rich, coming from someone with facial markings on her chin and forehead.

"Whatever," Aria said, sipping on her drink. "We get a lot of street children here. But not many of them are pirates."

Jack just glared at Aria. The arrogance in the asari's tone was infuriating. "Who the fuck are you?"

Aria yawned. "I really should implement an age restriction," she said to her guards.

Patriarch laughed. "I will talk to the bouncers about that."

Aria returned her attention to Jack.

"I am Aria T'Loak. Frankly, I find it offensive that you would even ask. But at least that gives me an excuse to talk about myself. You see, I quite like talking about Aria."

Jack thought she saw Patriarch rolling his eyes, but Aria continued.

"Life on Omega is a never-ending game of power. Every player uses violence, extortion and sex to reach for the top. Right now, I am the boss, and there is only one rule of the game: Don't fuck with Aria. The game never stops, and most players don't even survive their first move."

Jack snorted.

"I don't give a shit about your game. You're not taking my money!"

Aria smirked.

"I'll take half. Now, stop boring me, or I'll take even more."

Jack was fuming with rage.

"I'd rather die than give my credits to a fucking stripper!"

Aria slowly stood up from her couch. "Fair enough," she said.

Jack barely saw Aria's hand move, and she only just managed to put up a barrier in time to avoid the full force of the warp field the asari threw at her. She felt the mass effect fields shifting, pulling on her limbs, threatening to rip her apart. Her barrier, which had absorbed most of the power and saved her life, imploded violently, and the shockwave threw her backwards into a wall.

She landed on the floor and grabbed her ribs. She immediately knew that the collision with the wall had been far too hard not to cause internal injury. Her chest felt like it was on fire. Then she was picked up by two of Aria's batarian guards and dragged back in front of Aria.

"Cute biotics," the asari said. "For that I'll give you one last chance to pay up."

Jack spat out blood.

"Go fuck yourself," she said and slipped free from the two batarian guards. Ignoring the searing pain that was shooting through most of her body, she spun around and blasted the guards into the wall that she had just hit herself. She then focused all her biotic power into her fist, pulled back her arm and punched Aria T'Loak in the face.

She felt the asari's pretty cheekbone meet her knuckles, and Aria's head rattled on her neck. But the head was still attached to the body, something which Jack had not expected, considering all the power and hate she had put into that punch.

Aria looked back at Jack. A bruise was already showing under the asari's left eye. She shook her head from side to side, and, to Jack's great surprise, smiled. "Kids these days," Aria said.

Jack saw the queen of Omega curling up her fist, but was powerless to do anything, as it came closer and closer, until everything went black.

-X-X-X-

 _Afterlife – Omega – Two Days Later (2177 CE)_

Jack had slipped in and out of consciousness for two days. Each time she passed out, she expected never to wake up again, but she had. Asari waitresses had brought her water. She would wake up and find one of them, barely dressed, pouring water into her mouth.

She could hear the heavy bass beat and knew that she was still somewhere inside the Afterlife nightclub. The music made her pounding headache worse.

"Two days?" she asked hoarsely, trying not to move too much on the couch she was lying on. It hurt.

The asari waitress nodded. She had just injected some substance into Jack's arm to keep her awake.

"You are in the VIP section of Afterlife," the asari said.

"Why?" Jack asked, eagerly grabbing the glass of water the asari was offering.

The last thing she remembered was Aria's fist. Somehow, she was still convinced she was dead. But the pain in her face and her ribs told another story. She was still alive, but she had come close.

The asari shrugged, taking the empty glass back.

"My gang? My credits?" Jack asked, hissing as a jolt of pain shot through her chest.

The waitress shook her head.

Then Aria entered the room, and the waitress hurried out.

Jack closed her eyes, waiting for Aria to finish the job. When nothing happened, Jack tried to sit up on the couch, but the pain was blinding.

"You have four fractured ribs," Aria said, as Jack sighed and laid back down. "And the only reason your pretty little face is still attached to your skull is that my servants have been practically bathing you in medi-gel for two days."

"Kill me!" Jack demanded. She would have shouted, but both her lungs and her face was begging her not to.

Aria shrugged. "What would be the point of that? You're harmless, Jack."

Jack looked up at her in surprise. Aria knew who she was.

The asari smirked. "I did some research. You have been around, for a kid. So many gangs… Shitty gangs, but still… Impressive. Some of the pirates I interrogated called you the 'Psychotic Biotic'. Isn't that cute?"

Jack gritted her teeth and tried to sit up again, but she couldn't.

"Please, kill me!" she hissed.

Aria put her hand on Jack's chest and pressed. Jack screamed in pain.

"Don't you ever do that! Never beg! Pathetic!" the asari screamed into her face.

Jack gasped, trying to breathe normally again. "I hate you!" she whispered.

Aria smiled and nodded. "Good."

Jack was confused. Aria was behaving strangely. Why was she refusing to kill her?

"You're probably wondering what happened to your credits," Aria said. "If all this pain was worth something…"

Jack glared back at Aria.

"It wasn't," the asari said. "I took ALL your credits. Oh, and I killed Bix and his men… And I took his ship."

"Why not kill me then?" Jack asked.

"You entertain me," Aria said. "For a little girl, your balls and biotics are impressive, much more satisfying than dealing with most of the fools in this vermin's nest. I _will_ kill you right here and now, if that is what you truly want, or… I am willing to let you go, so you can return once you have become a worthy opponent. Then you can play the game of Omega."

"How about we fight now? I want my credits back!"

Aria laughed and patted Jack on the head. "You'll be back someday," she said and left the room.

Now alone in the VIP room, Jack screamed in frustration. She had been beaten, and Aria didn't even have the dignity to finish the job. But the queen of Omega had been right about one thing. She would return. Jack was not done with Omega. And she was not done with Aria.

-X-X-X-

 _Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Earth – 2179 CE_

Jack was lying on Ipanema Beach with a drink in her hand. The sky was blue without a single cloud on it, and the sun was blasting its rays down upon her. She would have to find some shade before long.

A group of Brazilian boys walked past in their speedos. She could tell from their bronze skin that they were locals. The tourists, including herself, were all very pale in comparison until the point where they turned red. This had just happened for Jack. She had spent too much time in the sun.

Actually, she found the beach quite boring. But she liked being in the water and feeling the power of the ocean, and the drinks were amazing.

"Hey, pretty girl," one of the boys said, stopping in front of Jack's beach towel. "Do you want to come to the parade with us?"

Jack lifted up her sunglasses and had a closer look at the boy. She could tell that he was enjoying the sight of her in a bikini. Speedos were quite revealing in that sense.

"No, thanks," she said, putting her shades back on.

The boy shrugged, and he and his friends continued down the beach. Jack saw him stopping at another group of girls, who evidently _did_ want to go to the parade with the boys.

Since she had come to Brazil, she had noticed how the boys there were very direct and straight-forward. Actually, she liked it. It suited her own no-bullshit mentality quite well. Jack was 17 years old now, and she now had to deal with other horny teens constantly approaching her. At least she wasn't only attracting creepy old men any longer.

Jack's own sexual drive was becoming stronger, and when she was drunk or high, which was more often than not, she often gave in and ended up having sex with total strangers, sometimes several in one night. She was also learning how to use her body to gain advantages, information or credits. Who cared? It was just a body.

She would have gone with the Brazilian boy, probably have done things to him in an alley that he wouldn't soon forget. But she had other plans.

She _was_ going to the parade, though. That parade was the entire reason she had come to Rio de Janeiro four days earlier.

Jack had come to Earth to look for Cerberus. The organization was strictly human after all. She thought Earth would be a good place to start looking for clues, even though she knew it was unlikely that Cerberus was actually based on Earth.

She had learned little more about the organization. Most people seemed to be ignorant of their activities, ignorant or unwilling to talk about it. Some described them as a terrorist group, others as a political party.

Sadly, Jack had forgotten the name of the planet where the facility she had grown up in was placed. Her memory of her escape was not clear. She suspected that her discovery of the outside world had overwhelmed her brain.

She had talked to a few people, trying to describe what she remembered. But nobody knew about the facility or how it was related to Cerberus.

But Jack could not stop thinking about Cerberus. If she closed her eyes and imagined their logo, things automatically began to hover all around her. It made her want to kill every single human, just to make sure that Cerberus was ended.

Jack did not have high hopes that this parade would lead her closer to Cerberus. The parade was arranged by the Alliance, celebrating the heroic actions of the marines who had just recently returned from Torfan. The attack on Torfan was carried out in retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz, the inevitable result of years of hatred between humans and batarians.

The Alliance Navy had pretty much hunted the batarians out of Citadel Space, but Jack still ran into large groups of them in the Terminus Systems. After the Skyllian Blitz and the attack on Torfan, tension between batarian and human gangs was higher than ever. Jack tried to stay out of those conflicts. They bored her, and thanks to Cerberus she wasn't really sure if she wanted the humans to win anyway. Not that she would actually stand on the side of batarians. She had plenty of reasons to hate them as well. For all she cared, they could all just kill each other.

She packed up her things and walked back to her beachside hotel. It was much too nice for her, and extremely expensive, especially since the parade had sent accommodation prices through the roof. But Jack had arrived on Earth with a bag full of hallex, which she had sold in Berlin. So she had plenty of money, for now.

The receptionist, who appeared to be using all of her wages on plastic surgery, frowned as Jack walked through the lobby. She hated her. Possibly because Jack did not live up to the bimbo's image of female, plastic-enhanced beauty, or maybe it was just because Jack was not overly concerned with trying to avoid dragging sand and water from the beach into the marble-floored lobby.

In the elevator, Jack swayed from side to side to the rhythm of soft bossa nova. There was a mirror, and she looked at her reflection as the elevator reached her floor. For once, she didn't have any major bruises on her face. It had been a while since she had been in a fight. Actually, she had abstained from harming anyone in the three weeks she had been on Earth so far. She found herself hoping that someone in Rio would give her an excuse to ruin that streak.

She exited the elevator and found her room. The sheets on the bed had been changed and the minibar, which she had emptied the previous night, was full again.

"Sweet," Jack said, opening a miniature bottle of Brazilian rum.

She looked out of the window. Down on the street, thousands were walking from the beach and into the city to watch the parade. Others were still down on the beach or enjoying the enormous market instead. She took a quick shower to wash off the sand and saltwater and quickly pulled on a pair of tight shorts and a black crop top with the logo of one of her current favorite bands, (H)Armless Masturbation, on it. She had saved a few hallex pills for herself, and she wanted to go to one of their concerts in Las Vegas before leaving Earth.

She made sure that her ponytail would stay in place, grabbed a few more bottles and a bag of candy from the minibar and left her room. On the way out of the lobby, she had had enough of the receptionist's disdainful glances. She turned and walked up to the front desk.

The receptionist quickly stopped frowning and whipped out her whitened teeth in the fakest smile that Jack had ever seen.

"How can I help you, miss?"

Jack lifted up the old-fashioned bell on the counter. In the old days it had been used to signal the piccolo. The guests bags were carried by mechs these days, but the hotel had decided to keep the bell as a bit of nostalgia.

Jack examined the bell, turned it around a couple of times, before she slammed it down onto the receptionists manicured fingers with a loud 'ding!'.

"Mind your own business, or I'll rip those fucking implants out of your ridiculous tits, bitch!" Jack shouted and placed the bell back on the counter.

The receptionist had all but crawled under the desk. She rubbed her hand. "Y-yes, miss."

"And don't call me that!" Jack yelled, spun around and hurried out of the lobby. She was already late for the parade.

She walked briskly along with the rest of the crowd, making their way towards the parade. Stopping on a corner, waiting to cross the street, she opened the bottles she had brought from the minibar and drank the contents. She quickly emptied the bag of candy into her mouth and chewed.

Then she crossed the street and walked another block until she reached a broad avenue, lined by thousands of people, waiting for the parade.

Jack walked along the avenue and found a spot where she would be able to see the entire parade. She could already hear the drums and the horns coming closer.

The Alliance had placed several loudspeakers along the boulevard, and a man was introducing the parade. _"_ _First, ladies and gentlemen, here is one of the Alliance's new Mantis gunships!"_

A big gunship painted in Alliance blue hovered along the boulevard. The pilot kept the vehicle just above street level so all the spectators could get a good look at the Alliance's new toy.

The Alliance Orchestra followed the gunship, playing an upbeat march, driving the parade forward.

 _"_ _And now, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the N7 graduates who participated in the liberation of Torfan."_

Four soldiers, all wearing dress uniforms with the N7 logo on their chest, walked right past Jack, perfectly synchronous in every single movement. They looked very handsome, and the crowd went absolutely crazy. The N7 were extremely popular in Rio de Janeiro. 'N-School' or 'The Villa', as the academy where the N7 were trained was called, was situated in Vila Militar in the western part of the city. The academy gave the locals great pride, and they affectionately called the graduates 'demons of Rio'.

The N7 were followed by the rest of the officers that were being celebrated for their service on Torfan. After the officers came the lower ranking soldiers.

Once the parade had passed, everyone followed the soldiers towards Flamengo Park. Jack followed the crowd, who slowly moved down the avenue. Upbeat samba was now playing from the loudspeakers, and the locals were dancing all around her.

How had she imagined that this would lead her to any information about Cerberus? These people knew nothing. They all just wanted to see their 'demons' and dance. Still, Jack followed the dancing crowd to Flamengo Park, where a giant stage had been built.

A woman walked out onto the stage. "Welcome everyone!" she yelled.

The crowd cheered and clapped. Jack started moving towards the exit. This was too boring. She wanted to find a bar.

The woman on the stage said something that Jack didn't pay attention to, and the crowd cheered again. The park was full of people, and it was not easy to get away when the rest wanted to go the other way, closer to the stage.

"Please welcome to the stage… N7 graduate and hero of the Skyllian Blitz and Torfan, Lieutenant Shepard!" the woman announced, and the crowd screamed and yelled as if they were at a rock concert. Jack just wanted to get away.

She finally escaped the sea of humans and looked around for a bar. She did not find one, but she saw the gunship that had been a part of the parade parked in the other end of the park. Two armed Alliance soldiers stood in front of it, listening to the lieutenant's speech.

Jack was overwhelmed by a strong urge to steal the gunship. She was bored, and she hadn't done anything _that_ bad in weeks. She needed entertainment.

She walked closer to the gunship and made sure to go in a circle around the two soldiers, who paid more attention to the stage than the vehicle they were supposed to guard.

To Jack's great surprise, she found that the cockpit was unlocked. Surely, the pilot had broken some Alliance rule by leaving the gunship like this. She slowly opened the canopy and crawled into the pilot's seat.

Now, she had learned to fly a shuttle, sort of, but she had never flown a gunship, and certainly not a brand new model such as this one.

She managed to start the engines and the gunship started hovering a few meters above the grass.

The guards whirled around. She laughed at the way they waved their arms and screamed at her. She tried to fire the ship's machinegun, but the Alliance had not loaded any of the weapons for the parade.

The guards pointed their rifles up at her, but as she was sitting in an armored gunship with state of the art kinetic shields, they might as well have been holding wooden spears.

Jack hit the accelerator, and the gunship darted forward. She nearly collided with the stage, but managed to pull up in the last second. The gunship continued forward towards a skyscraper, and Jack realized how little control she had. She barely avoided the building by rolling the entire gunship.

"Fuck!" she cursed when the gunship took off once again.

She zoomed along the coast towards the mountains and decided that now would be the time to get out. The ship would not allow her to open the canopy while in flight, so she punched it a couple of times. The glass, not protected from internal attacks, broke easily, and Jack jumped out into the wind.

She used her biotics to slow her descend, and she landed softly in the shallow water. She looked back up at the gunship, which continued towards the mountains until it collided with the enourmous Christ the Redeemer statue. The gunship exploded and the entire statue that had been watching over Rio de Janeiro for over 200 years crumbled.

"Whoa," Jack said as she waded through the water and onto the beach. Luckily, the beach had been almost empty where she landed. But she could already hear the sirens, and she quickly got off the beach and disappeared into a shopping mall where she stole new clothes and a large hat with flowers on it.

It took her almost two hours to walk back to the hotel, trying to look as innocent as possible every time she met a police patrol. Once she arrived, she dropped the stupid flower hat in a garbage bin outside. She hurried through the lobby, rode the elevator up to her room and packed her things. She was only traveling with a small bag, so it did not take her long.

Back in the lobby, she walked up to the front desk, and the receptionist froze.

"I'm checking out," Jack said, placing the key card to her room down on the counter.

"But you're booked for another night," the receptionist said.

"I'm leaving!" Jack insisted. On the screen behind the receptionist, she saw footage of police shuttles, circling around the sad remains of Christ the Redeemer and searching along the shore.

 _"_ _According to Alliance witnesses, the culprit is a young woman with long, dark hair and tattoos covering most of her body. It is still unknown if the woman was killed in the explosion, or if she managed to abandon the gunship. 'If she is alive, we will find her,' says Police Director Alves. Anyone with information regarding the young woman can contact the Rio Police Department using a special hotline,"_ said a news anchor on the screen.

"Hey!" Jack said, slamming her hand down on the counter, as the receptionist turned towards the screen.

"W-would you like a refund or a voucher for your next stay?" the receptionist asked.

Jack snorted. "I'll take a refund."

The receptionist transferred the money back to Jack's account. And before she left, Jack turned off the television. "You should go out and get some fresh air," she said and left the hotel.

-X-X-X-

 _O_ _mega – 2180 CE_

Jack sighed, leaning her head back against the dirty wall. She was hiding in a creepy alley on Omega, not sure if Aria would attack her if she knew she was back on the station. She felt tired, bored with everything and angry at the entire galaxy.

Most of the galaxy hated her just as much as she hated it. She was wanted in almost all systems she had visited and constantly looking over her shoulder for mercenaries or lawmen out to get her. She had not been back on Earth since the Rio incident, and the hanar had recently declared her guilty of vandalism and placed a massive bounty on her head. She could not believe that they wanted her dead for simply crashing a turian space station into one of their moons. Apparently, the moon had been sacred to the jellyfish, and the craters that was now visible from the surface of Kahje was not appreciated.

The Citadel, she had learned, was no longer safe for her. C-Sec and the Alliance were looking for the 'Psychotic Biotic'. She had to be careful.

She was tired of it all, feeling that the universe owed her more. Was this really all there was to it? She was just 18 years old, but she had already done so much. And now her options were being limited by the fact that she was constantly on the run.

Although Omega was not a place typically associated with relaxation, at least there were no authorities looking for her here. All she had to worry about was Aria. But Jack had not forgotten just how extensive Aria's power Omega was, which was why she was now hiding behind a dumpster, contemplating her miserable life.

How could all the fun things in life be over, when she hadn't even been alive for two decades yet. And most of those 18 and a half years had been absolute shit. Only the last four years, where she had been free, had contained glimpses of fun. She almost couldn't bear the thought that her life might continue for another 80 years, if she didn't find a way to have herself killed first.

She was doing more drugs than ever, believing it the only way for her to remain sane. She was stealing and having sex with disgusting pirates and mid-level crime bosses to pay for her pills, syringes and powder.

The drugs often made her hallucinate, and on the bad days, after half a week of constantly tripping and little to no sleep, she would lose the ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. She had caught herself trying to fight a krogan that wasn't there, having sex with a human lady who she was sure had been an asari and dancing to music that wasn't really playing.

But she would not stop taking drugs. Sobriety was worse.

Omega was an excellent place to find drugs. She could get anything, all she had to do was snap her fingers and provide the credits. The hard part was avoiding Aria. The queen of Omega was not called so for nothing. Aria ruled the drug industry, easily the biggest business on Omega. She owned all the labs, and the dealers all reported back to her. In most cases, there were many middlemen between the street pusher and Aria, but the money always ended up in Aria's pockets.

Jack rose from the floor and beat the dust off her pants. It was time to leave the alley. She needed to meet with a slaver who had promised to give her five grams of red sand if only she would suck him off. Five grams for oral was a bargain on Omega, and Jack had agreed. She was supposed to meet him on his ship.

As she walked towards the docks, Jack passed several prostitutes, showing their thighs and their tits to the newly-arrived, desperate for money.

Jack snorted scornfully. She thought the prostitutes were pathetic. But she could not escape from the fact that she was doing exactly the same thing, only she was being paid more because people wanted to fuck the infamous Psychotic Biotic.

Before she could reach the docks, she was stopped by a familiar krogan. Patriarch grabbed her arm and pulled her into an alley.

"I knew it was you," he said, pinning her against the wall.

"I'm not here to fight Aria," she said, hoping he would let her go. She had five grams of red sand waiting for her.

Patriarch pulled her further into the dark alley.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I don't want to rule Omega," Jack said. "Why do you want me to fight her? Are you not satisfied with having Aria as a boss? I can promise you, I would be even harder to work for."

Patriarch looked back down the alley. Instead of answering her, he started dragging her further away from the main street. They finally ended up in front of a door, which Patriarch unlocked with his fingerprints. The door opened slowly, and Patriarch pointed Jack down a narrow corridor.

She walked in front of Patriarch in total darkness. She felt claustrophobic and couldn't imagine how the enormous krogan managed to follow her through the corridor.

She could hear music in the distance, somewhere in the darkness in front of them.

"Are you taking me to Afterlife?" she asked.

Patriarch gave a deep confirmatory growl, and Jack prepared herself to meet Aria again. She knew she would have to fight for her life, very soon. She could turn around and try to kill Patriarch, but she had fought enough krogan to know that a fight with a specimen of this size in such a confined space would not end well for her.

The dark corridor somehow let her straight into a dark corner of the Afterlife nightclub, and Patriarch nudged her forward across the dancefloor towards Aria's balcony.

The nightclub was even busier than the last time she had been on Omega. In the corners she could see customers sniffing red sand and getting private dances from Aria's strippers.

People seemed to move out of the way of Patriarch, as he and Jack moved across the club.

Finally, Jack stood in front of Aria. The asari smiled.

"Did you really think you could hide right under my nose, Jack?" Aria asked.

Jack didn't answer.

"You've made quite a name for yourself," Aria continued. "Perhaps you think you can beat me now."

Jack shrugged.

"I hear you've been whoring around," Aria continued, smirking. "I must say that I had higher expectations for you."

"Why would I care what some asari bitch thinks of me?" Jack retorted.

"Good girl," Aria chuckled.

Jack flashed her biotics. Aria's arrogance was infuriating. "Are we doing this or not!?"

Aria yawned. "Killing a little girl would give me no pleasure. You're not ready yet."

Jack was foaming with rage. If they were not going to fight, had she just been brought before Aria to be humiliated?

Aria picked up a drink from her table and sipped. "You can stay on Omega," she said. "My men won't bother you. As long as you don't interfere with my business, I will leave you alone, until you're ready."

"What if I am ready now?" Jack asked, glowing brightly.

Aria shook her head. "You're not."

Jack curled her fists. Every fiber in her body was screaming at her to attack the smug asari standing right in front of her. But she knew that Aria was right. She was not ready to take on an asari with several centuries of experience.

"Do you want my advice?" Aria asked.

Jack spat on the floor.

"Well, you're going to get it anyway, bitch," Aria said. "Lay off the drugs and stop fucking these lowlifes. You had such potential, don't throw it all away."

Jack snarled at the asari. "Mind your own business."

Aria sighed and signaled Patriarch to lead Jack away. The krogan escorted Jack down to Afterlife's main bar.

"She's right, you know," he noted.

"I'm not interested in what that blue bitch says," Jack bit back. "Or what you think, for that matter. Aria took my money and my ship. She nearly killed me, and someday I am going to kill her."

Patriarch laughed his booming laughter. "That is what she wants you to try," he said. "But I can tell you, from experience, that it is not going to be easy."

"We'll see," Jack said, leaving Patriarch at the bar. If she hurried, she might still have a chance to earn five grams of red sand down at the docks.

Later that night, Jack was back in Afterlife, lying on her back on the floor, staring into the ceiling. She was on her third line of sand. Amazingly, despite being flat on her back in the middle of the dancefloor, nobody seemed to find her behavior particularly strange, and no one stepped on her. Whatever you did in Afterlife, the customers had always seen someone doing something weirder.

Jack liked the feeling of the floor against her back. She was being massaged by the powerful bass. She expected Aria's people to throw her out, but they didn't. Aria simply watched from her balcony.

The asari had suggested that she started doing fewer drugs and stopped having sex with strangers, so, naturally, Jack would do the exact opposite.

She would take as many pills as possible and fuck whomever she liked. She would bang them on the middle of the dancefloor if she could get away with it. She wondered if Aria had a partner, a husband or anything along those lines. Oh, how she would enjoy fucking that person, right in front of Aria.

Still lying on the floor, Jack poured her last two grams of red sand into her mouth and swallowed the powder. Then she sat up and looked around the club. The red sand had made her throat very dry. She needed a drink.

She stumbled over to the nearest bar and signaled one of the bartenders.

"What can I get you?" the asari bartender asked.

"Anything that Aria hasn't poisoned," Jack said.

The bartender smiled and began mixing a cocktail.

"If you're still alive, I don't think you have to worry about Aria wanting to kill you," the asari said. "She usually handles loose ends quite effectively. And besides, Aria is letting Adina run the club tonight."

"Who's Adina?" Jack asked.

"Aria's younger sister," the bartender said, accepting Jack's payment and placing the cocktail on the bar. "Beautiful young thing, more of a people-person than Aria."

Jack nodded. She had a hard time imagining how anyone could be less of a people-person than Aria. She had never heard about Adina before. Perhaps she could get to Aria through her sister.

"Where is Adina?" she asked the bartender. "I would like to meet her."

"I'm afraid she has left the club for tonight," the bartender replied, and leaning closer she whispered, "she's probably knee-deep in naked humans by now."

Jack shook her head, slammed down her drink and walked away from the bar. She found an empty couch in the corner of Afterlife and sat down. At least it seemed like Omega would be relatively safe for her. For some reason, Aria was unwilling to kill her. But she was not satisfied with just being safe. She wanted more excitement, more drugs, more random sex and more violence. Fuck what Aria said.

As she sat on the couch, staring into the floor and thinking about her future, someone suddenly poked her shoulder. She looked up and saw a tall, bald man standing in front of her. He wore bright white pants, but his torso was naked. He was very skinny.

The man reached his hand out to Jack.

"Come with me, child," he said.

"I am not a child!" she said. "Fuck off!"

"You look like you need my help," he said. He spoke very softly, but clearly.

"Well, I don't," Jack replied.

"Let me guess," the man continued, totally ignoring Jack's dismissive attitude. "You are always alone. You are searching for a deeper meaning in the universe."

That was kind of true, Jack thought. She nodded.

"I am Brother Gregor, I represent the Cult of Wyna. You should join us, we can help you," the bald man said.

"A cult?" Jack asked. "What kind of cult?"

"We worship our goddess, Wyna. We serve her in this life so we get to be with her in the next," Gregor explained.

"And how do you worship and serve Wyna?" Jack asked.

"Come," Gregor said, holding out his hand, "I'll show you."

Jack did not take Gregor's hand, but stood up. "Lead the way," she said.

Gregor smiled and Jack followed him out of Afterlife and down to the docks. Apparently, the cult was on a ship. Gregor lead her into the airlock, where another man, tall, slender and bald like Gregor, welcomed her to the ship.

He introduced himself as Father Paulus. He was the leader of the cult. Like Brother Gregor, Father Paulus was shirtless, but his pants were gold instead of white.

"Thank you for coming to our ship, Jack," he said, bowing.

"How do you know my na.."

"Please, follow me," Father Paulus continued and started walking down the hallway.

Gregor nodded eagerly, and Jack followed.

Father Paulus showed her into a large, dimly lit room. The temperature was a lot higher than in the rest of the ship, but the noise was even more remarkable. Loud moans filled up the room. It sounded like a hymn. In the darkness, Jack saw dozens of glistening, naked men and women. They were all bald like Gregor and Paulus, but completely naked. They seemed to be in a trance-like state as they had sex, all of them moving in the same rhythm and contributing to the hymn with their moans.

It was only after a while that Jack noticed they were actually chanting "Wyna! Wyna! Wyna!" as they moved together.

Jack looked at Paulus, who smiled back at her with pride. Apparently, this was how the cult worshipped their goddess. By banging each other senseless. From what Jack could see, the cultists were most likely doing drugs as well. She had seen enough to recognize the far-away stare in their eyes. They were definitely on something.

Next to Jack, Brother Gregor eagerly kicked off his shoes and pulled down his pants. He was already erect. Father Paulus handed him a pill, which Gregor swallowed, confirming Jack's suspicion that the cultists were taking drugs.

Gregor smiled blissfully and joined the sweaty pile of bodies on the floor. He effortlessly found the same rhythm as the others.

Father Paulus stepped back out of the room and Jack followed him.

"What do you think?" he asked, closing the door behind her.

In her travels, Jack had heard several stories of gods, goddesses, higher beings, spirits and demons. She believed none of them. She was not convinced by this Wyna-character either, but she _had_ been searching for some direction in her life, a purpose or a deeper meaning.

She highly doubted that worshipping Wyna was the answer, but as long as she could do drugs and have sex while she searched for 'the truth', she would try anything.

"I will join your cult," she said.

Father Paulus' smile broadened.

"I'm glad to hear it. Please, follow me to your initiation ceremony," he said.

Paulus showed her into another, smaller room. I seemed empty apart from a few shelves on the walls and a chair in the middle.

He asked Jack to take a seat, and she did.

"We sacrifice our hair to the Goddess," Father Paulus said, pulling out a pair of scissors and a razorblade. "You will have to shave your head every morning. I will do it for you today.

Jack undid her ponytail and let her long, dark hair flow.

Paulus sighed. "A beautiful sacrifice!"

Jack was not so sure that Wyna, if she even existed, would be very happy about her hair. Hiding in the alleys of Omega had made it very dirty.

Father Paulus walked behind Jack and started cutting her hair. Long, dark strands landed in Jack's lap, and she picked them up and rubbed the hair between her fingers. She wondered how she would look without hair.

Paulus kept cutting until he eventually put down the scissors and started using the razor. The feeling of the blade against her scalp was new, but not uncomfortable. She could get used to doing this every day.

As soon as Father Paulus was done, he asked her to stand up and take her clothes off. She stood up and turned around. It looked like the floor had been carpeted with her hair. She ran her hand across her head, it was completely smooth. She looked around for a mirror, but there wasn't one in the room.

"Take your clothes off," Father Paulus repeated, and Jack obeyed. She was honestly very happy to get rid of her dirty clothes.

She stood naked in front of Paulus, who then started scrubbing her clean with ice cold water. He sometimes muttered Wyna's name, and Jack compliantly lifted her arms and legs when it was needed.

"Wait a second," she said, and Father Paulus stopped scrubbing her inner thigh. "Can I still drink?"

Father Paulus chuckled. "If you want to. Wyna has created the pleasures of the universe for us to enjoy."

Jack nodded, and Paulus continued scrubbing. "If that's the case, I like this Wyna already," she said.

Once she was clean, Father Paulus handed her a pair of new shoes and white pants similar to the ones that Gregor had worn. It seemed, since she wasn't given a shirt, that she was expected to walk around with a naked torso, just like the men. She supposed it was fair, at least the uniform was the same for everyone.

She put on the pants and the shoes, and Father Paulus smiled at her and kissed her forehead.

"Welcome, Sister Jack."

* * *

 _Author's notes:_

 _Thank you very much for reading 'The Psychotic Biotic'. This chapter concludes my little trilogy about Jack's troublesome teenage years. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know in the review section._

 _If you have not read 'Biotic Beginnings' yet, I strongly recommend that you do. If you're interested in knowing how the relationship between Jack and Aria developed, you should definitely read 'Biotic Beginnings'. It's all in there, along with much, much more of Jack's life history._

 _If you enjoyed this story or 'Biotic Beginnings' (or both), feel free to follow me. I will be putting out more stories about Jack and the other main characters from 'Biotic Beginnings'._

 _Thank you for your support. Please, leave a review. Reviews are like drug-fueled sexcapades._


End file.
